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Print book interior design by Jeff Stiefel

ISBN 9780316535984

LCCN 2026933895

E3-20260804-JV-NF-ORI

For Bob Hammel

October 6, 1936–July 20, 2025

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The law they swore they’d get him, but the devil got him first.

—Robert Mitchum, “The Ballad of Thunder Road”

1

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

IN MY MORE romantic moments—no, what did you call them? Melodramatic, that was your word. In my more melodramatic moments, I imagine I see Eddie one last time, and he sends me a message in a single look, the way only a lover can.

What does he tell me?

That second chances, if you’re so fortunate as to receive them, shouldn’t be wasted.

He never talked like that, but he could have, if he’d gotten in a different car with different men on a different day.

You don’t need to smirk. I know that’s not the story I get to tell.

Mine ends in Maine. Eddie always loved the way Maine looked on a map. How it sits up there all by itself, isolated. He said it was like something most people miss in the rearview mirror, tucked in the corner. He was always thinking about maps and mirrors. Hard not to be, with you people always behind him. He thought going to Maine was like heading upstream, the perfect place to avoid attention.

I suppose. But I read once that some fish make it upstream only to get trapped in shallow pools, without enough current left to take them back. The pools drain, the sun rises, and they boil right there in the same water they fought to reach when it was cold and running hard. I thought that was so sad. That’s why I hate the way Maine looks on a map: I see a dead end. Look at it and tell me I’m wrong.

Then again, Eddie never did like the way I read a map. Neither does my son.

I hope they’re right in the end. I hope Maine for them is all cool water with strong currents and that any sinners who make it that far can get clean—or at least lost in the shadows and forgotten. Being forgotten sounds like solace right now.

Everyone wants to be famous until they are.

I know, you’re not interested in such opinions. You only want to know how I ended up here. All right. Let’s get on with it: I loved the man and I wanted to kill him.

What’s so hard to understand about that?

2

NICKEL

THERE ARE BAD DOGS and there are mad dogs. Nickel Terhune learned the difference on the farm of his youth and was refreshed on the concept years later on a lovely spring day in Lima, Ohio.

Heat haze on the highway, warm west wind, the kind of day that called memories to mind, first loves and stolen kisses, a girl named Savannah Cody. The first time he’d seen her was more than a decade ago on a day like this; the last time was mere weeks ago, at her mother’s funeral, which Nickel was forced to observe from a distance, being by then one of the most-wanted fugitives in America.

Things changed fast in the land of what could have been and almost was. There was a version of life in which he might’ve still been called Eddie, might’ve been driving a legally purchased car with Savannah at his side and their son, Alford, in the back seat. Instead, he was known as Nickel and driving a stolen Studebaker with two gangsters for passengers, headed back to rob the same jewelry store for the second time in two weeks.

The return to Lima was foolish, and he knew it, and so did James Dalhover, though Dalhover didn’t much care, because it had been nearly a week since he’d last held a gun on anyone, and the man got off on terror in a way Nickel had never known. It was Al Brady who made the call for all of them—Brady always did—and for him the latest visit to the Kay Jewelry store in Lima was a matter of pride. The last time through, he’d gotten nearly seven thousand dollars’ worth of jewels, but he’d also been shot at by a member of his own gang, and the papers had a hell of a time with that.

Al Brady was unamused.

They’d been holed up in a boardinghouse in Wheeling, West Virginia, when he read the account aloud, his eyes bright with whiskey and rage.

A heroic employee of the jewelry store, Bernard Brender, engaged the notorious Al Brady directly, leaping bravely into action, unafraid of the man’s weapon or those of his evil acquaintances. One of the other gangsters opened fire, shooting wildly, shattering glass cases. Brady, rising from behind the counter, nearly bit a bullet fired by one of his own goons.

“Stop that, you idiot,” the gangster cried. “It’s me.”

“Me who?” the other bandit replied.

“Me-me, you crazy fool!” Brady bellowed.

Although the gang escaped, Brender’s heroics and the criminals’ comedic incompetence caused them to leave the most valuable of the jewels.

Brady lowered the paper, glowering at the other men as if to ensure that they were properly offended. There were only the three of them by then, as the gunman who’d taken the wild shots, Jimmy Cummings, had been pistol-whipped and left on the road.

“Can you believe that bullshit?” Brady snarled. “I mean, can you fucking believe it?”

Nickel allowed that he certainly could not, although he was privately impressed with how much the newspaper reporter had gotten right. An employee had indeed wrestled with Al Brady, and Jimmy Cummings had indeed opened fire, and most of his bullets had gone toward his boss. Even the dialogue exchange was close to accurate, the exception being the language. Al Brady had bellowed plenty of things, but nothing as sanitized as “You crazy fool!”

Still, you had to sell newspapers to churchgoers, so one had to anticipate some creative license when it came to quoting Al Brady. The story sounded funny because, up to a point, it had been funny. Hell, Jimmy had damn near shot off his own boss’s head. Who couldn’t laugh at that?

Al Brady.

That was the trouble.

That was why they were back in Lima, car windows cracked, warm spring air blowing in like hell’s breath on Nickel’s neck.

“By the time we’re done,” Al Brady said, “we’re gonna make Dillinger look like a fuckin’ piker.”

He spent a lot of time comparing his work and reputation to John Dillinger’s and loved to point out that for all the attention his fellow Hoosier commanded, he’d died with three dollars in his pocket, gunned down in a Chicago street. How it was supposed to end differently for any of them, Nickel didn’t know. The number of dollars in the pocket, maybe.

Anyhow, Dillinger was dead, and they weren’t.

Fuckin’ piker.

Nickel saw the jewelry store waiting just up the street. He parked. They popped the doors, climbed out of the car and into the windy midwestern Wednesday. It was too warm for overcoats, but the jackets hid the guns. Nickel followed Brady and Dalhover up the street. A Black man with a broom was working out in back of a dime store; a woman on her knees pulled weeds from a flower bed. The sidewalk was empty.

“Hard and fast and make ’em remember we were here,” Brady instructed.

They turned right, went up four wide stone steps, and entered the jewelry store.

The salesclerk was the same woman who’d been there the last time, and when her scream roused the jeweler from the back room, he hardly seemed startled, only dismayed—This again? He had his keys in his hand almost before they said a word.

“You must be one dumb son of a bitch,” Al Brady told him, “to think I’d trust any stone in that front case.”

Nickel, Al, and the jeweler went into the back room while Dalhover kept his weapon on the employees and customers in the front. Nickel put his gun in the jeweler’s back as the man turned the tumblers with trembling fingers. Jewels were inside the safe, yes, but not many. Probably because they hadn’t had time to restock the inventory. The ink had hardly dried on the last insurance claim. There had been better eras to be a jeweler in the Midwest.

“Where’s the rest of it?” Brady demanded.

“That’s all there is!” the little man said, thinning strands of hair shining with sweat and pomade.

“Bullshit!”

“You already stole the rest!”

Fair point, Nickel thought.

Out in the front room, Dalhover was breaking glass just because he liked to hear it shatter. The sound pleased him, always had. Nickel holstered his gun, raised the pillowcase he’d brought in, and swept the jewels into it. Not much weight to the pillowcase when the safe was empty. Almost like this had been a bad idea.

Still, he was calm enough. Adrenalized, sure; it was hard not to feel some juice when you had the glass breaking and the women screaming and the weight of the pistol heavy in your belt, but he was far from panicked. That was what practice did for you.

“No, no, no, please, no!” a woman wailed out front, and Dalhover answered, harsh, telling her to shut up or eat lead. He liked to talk the way folks claimed Dillinger had, but it never rang true to Nickel, sounded like a comic book. He had jailed with Dillinger and Homer Van Meter and Jack Hamilton and the rest of that poor, dead bunch, and he’d never heard any of them talk about eating lead.

“That’s all of it,” Nickel told Brady, swinging the safe’s door shut, clang. “Let’s go.”

But Al Brady had returned to Lima to make a point, and so he made it with the butt of his gun, battering the jeweler’s balding scalp once, twice, three times, until the man was down and bleeding and silent.

Bad dogs and mad dogs.

Different.

They made it back to the front room. The sidewalk waited in the sun, blissfully empty, no sound of sirens, escape there for the taking, but still Al wasn’t satisfied, needed to join Dalhover in smashing some glass, kicking a floor-length mirror over and stomping it, all with a disturbing blend of fury and indifference, a fighter punching without purpose.

“Let’s go,” Nickel said again. They were a man down because Al Brady had been so offended by the newspaper accounts that he hadn’t waited to replace Jimmy before they robbed the store again. That left only three, which meant no wheelman. They’d have to run for the Studebaker—only a block, but still a run.

“We’ll see you again soon,” Dalhover told the trembling brunette clerk who lay on the floor with her arms over her head.

She slid away from him on the floor, a shard of glass opening up a crimson line on her leg just below the hem of her yellow dress. Her eyes were on Nickel. He turned, pushed the door open, and stepped outside. Saw the police car.

Shit.

He slammed back against the wall, trying to clear out of the firing line, knowing he was too late.

No shots came.

No sound.

He leaned forward. The police car wasn’t flashing lights or blaring sirens, wasn’t moving, was just parked there, which was almost comical, considering the circumstances. There was one cop behind the wheel, head down, like he was lighting a smoke maybe, sitting there between the robbers and their ride, oblivious.

Brady came out of the store, saw Nickel’s lifted index finger, and looked down the street at the police car. He raised his gun quickly, then lowered it.

“He’s not even paying attention,” Brady said.

“No.”

Now Dalhover was outside too, pulling the door shut behind them, sealing the soft sobs of the women inside. A discarded newspaper skittered down the sidewalk, riding the western wind. The only sound. It was blown into the shadows and then out of sight.

“Walk by,” Brady said. “Just walk on by.”

It was running time, not walking time, Nickel’s body wanting speed while his brain demanded calm, but he stayed steady as they started down the street. The pillowcase with the jewels thumped against his thigh. It seemed impossible that no one was screaming. The folks in the jewelry store were still hiding; the rest of the town was unaware. The cop looked up, a fresh cigarette pinched between his lips, just as Nickel had suspected. His eyes drifted to them, still indifferent.

Which means we just keep walking, Nickel thought even as Al Brady stepped into the street and lifted his gun.

“Get out of the fuckin’ car!” Brady bellowed. His gun was leveled at the wide-eyed cop’s head, nothing separating them, not even glass, because the cop had the window down. Twenty paces away, the Studebaker waited.

Should be two cops in that car, Nickel thought. He’s parked with the engine running because he’s waiting on someone.

A part of his brain felt validated when the first shot came from the door of the five-and-dime beside the car. Everyone else seemed to think the bullet came from Al Brady—including maybe Al himself. Nickel knew it was from the missing partner, though, so he was moving for the Studebaker when the second shot came, the bullet spanking off the police car’s roof like a struck match. The officer’s partner was coming out of the dime store firing high and wide.

Brady answered with a blast that missed and blew out a panel of the dime store’s front window, and then Dalhover was shooting too, and Nickel was running, had the Studebaker in sight when his leg jittered sideways and he fell and rolled across the pavement, ripping the shoulder seam of his jacket.

Tripped, he thought, because the pain seemed to come more from his bruised shoulder than anyplace else. It wasn’t until he tried to rise that he felt the bullet wound. Low on the calf, hot blood, scarlet streaks on the street. The one from the car had shot Nickel. He’d gotten out and drawn his gun and fired from his knees. Brady kicked the cop to the ground but didn’t shoot him; instead, he raced for the Studebaker, and as he passed Nickel, he said, “Run!”

Running was all that Nickel had wanted to do back when it was a thing he could do. Now he limped, geysering blood with each step, and wouldn’t have made it to the car if Dalhover hadn’t caught him. Dalhover got the doors open and dumped Nickel into the back seat. The only thing between them and escape was a driver, but Al Brady ignored the wheel and went for the trunk.

A moment later, the machine gun chattered.

Screams were all around now, everything in the once still, silent afternoon coming alive to either shout or shoot. Al Brady swept the street right to left and then back, bullets fired without targets, but even heedless bullets did their jobs well when there were enough of them.

The cops stayed down. That was what the big gun could do for you. Horsepower. The Thompson machine gun was the John Deere of crime.

“Let’s move!” Dalhover said, clambering behind the wheel. Brady got in beside him, and Nickel curled up on the floor in the back, holding the pillowcase to his leg, the weight of the jewels resting on the wound like ice cubes. Dalhover turned the engine over and pulled a hard U-turn, and Brady put the window down, hoisted himself up, and sprayed another remember-me round at the heart of Lima, Ohio.

They were on the highway before the sirens came.

3

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: Describe the first time you met Al Brady.

Ha! You should ask him that question. It was more memorable for him, because I was in the buff. Nickel had left for cigarettes before I got out of bed, and the day was hot even though it wasn’t yet noon. We’d been up late, and I’ve never been one who thought you had to put on a certain kind of clothing just because of a given hour. Or any clothing. Now, Al Brady wasn’t expecting to find anyone in the bedroom except Eddie, considering that Eddie rarely had women, despite being by far the best-looking man of that whole gang. He didn’t have the knack for small talk or easy charm, that was all. He was happy to keep his own counsel, you know? So here came Al, shouting that it’s time to wake up and hit the road, daylight’s wasting, and then he opened the door. I was standing in front of the mirror doing what I call an assessment, so thanks to the mirror, Al Brady got both a front and back view. I suspect that day ranked high on the best of his sorry life.

Toland: Your association with Terhune goes back a long time, correct?

I love how you ask questions you already know the answers to. You federal agents sure are clever. Yes, at that point I’d known the man who fathered my child for a long time.

Toland: How long?

Well, I was sixteen when I met him, so you do the math. Eddie was nineteen, which isn’t so much of a difference now, but age gaps are all about proportion. When I was still in school and he was a hired man on my father’s farm, our “association,” as you call it, would’ve been scandalous. Dad brought him on for common labor and kept him despite my mother’s objections because Eddie had such remarkable mechanical aptitude. He could fix anything. That became a problem for him later on, you know. It was that skill that got him introduced to Brady and Dalhover in the first place. They were stealing cars and stripping them for parts and neither one of them had Eddie’s gifts. He could take apart a whole car in the time it took Al Brady to loosen a radiator cap.

Toland: What were your mother’s objections to him?

Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. It’s just such a long list I don’t know where to begin. I suppose we can make it as simple as family. Hers had a certain puritanical reputation, beginning with the famous novelist the Reverend General Jacob Winter himself. She was a Cody by name but a Winter by blood, and that family was just about as warm as their name suggests. An Old Testament kind of worldview, if you know what I mean. Pious. She had righteousness and book royalties; the Terhunes had moonshine and cockfighting. Different sides of the tracks and all that. She missed the good that was in Eddie. There was plenty of it, in the beginning. You were the ones who squeezed it out of him, first at the jail down in Frankfort and later up in Michigan City. I’m not saying he was innocent, but those places changed him. Such cruelty occurs behind those walls. You’ll pretend it isn’t part of the infection in this country, but a smart person knows better. Reformatory is a silly, sad word. No one is coming out of those places reformed; they’re coming out angry and alone. They’ve been marked by the experience, and polite society won’t welcome them in, so is it any surprise that the friends they take up with are the ones they met inside, fellow inmates? Of course not. You all taught him to be mean and introduced him to the people who could exploit that. Eddie knew cruelty from his own father, but at least at home, he had his escapes. The woods, the river. Me.

He was so handsome! Tall and lean and with those muscles in his arms like a deep V under the shoulders. When it got hot enough for him to roll his sleeves all the way up, a girl could swoon.

What’s that—am I boring you or embarrassing you? Yes, I know, there’s an electric chair to keep warm. I understand. Excuse me for not wanting to rush through the tale this one last time. You’d be wise to slow down yourself. There won’t be any more questioning of Savannah Cody tomorrow, will there?

Toland: Just explain your relationship with Nickel Terhune, please.

That first summer, he was building a new fence. I would follow him when he worked. He pretended not to like that. He wasn’t good at pretending, though. He was a quiet man, and a calm one, and the only sure way to fluster Eddie Terhune was with a pretty smile. He could never stop blushing when I caught him looking at me, and I caught him plenty. Even then, though, I had to be the one who made the first move, so I finally kissed him. He might’ve worked for years and just kept on looking, because he was a gentleman at his core. You can roll your eyes if you like, but he was. Brady and Dalhover and Shaffer and those others were good at fake charm, but Eddie was sincere. My father saw that in him too.

Dad almost never went against my mother—it wasn’t worth the lectures and the scripture quoting—but he bucked her when it came to hiring Eddie and keeping him on, and she never did let him hear the end of that. I doubt even her death saved him; she had one of those voices that trailed after you. Always making this little sound with her tongue on the roof of her mouth, not quite a tsk, but close. The perfect sound of disapproval. Poor Dad; he lived with that sound. He’d been a detective, of course, and he was a good judge of people. Don’t let him know I told you that. But he really is a fine judge of character, and he saw all the potential in Eddie that most people in our area refused to acknowledge simply because of his family. When you look at it that way, I guess I’m the problem, aren’t I? I was the one who kissed Eddie. You can blame me for everything that happened next.

Savannah Cody’s poison kiss.

Make sure some reporter uses that as a headline when this is over, would you?

4

ALFORD

ON THE DAY my mother discovered her first gray hair, she announced that she was going to murder my father.

I’m not sure if the gray hair led her to make the choice or if it was coincidental. She didn’t seem angry about the insurgent’s presence, merely dismayed.

“Look at this bold little bastard, Alford!” she said, pinching the gray strand between two fingertips and lifting it clear from the dark shoulder-length hair that always seemed to hold the light. “Didn’t even have the courtesy to let me make it to thirty.”

She faced the mirror with a thoughtful expression, then said, “The time has come for me to kill your father. I trust you understand that.”

Then she yanked the hair free without so much as a wince. I cringed on her behalf—and a little bit, maybe, on my father’s behalf, although the idea of people wishing him dead was hardly a new one. My mother was the latest entrant in a competitive race. On that day in the spring of 1937, my father had been on wanted bulletins for months. I didn’t think the police presented more of a threat to him than my mother, though—and at that point I’d lived with her for only three weeks, a tumultuous stretch following the death of my grandmother.

I’d spent my childhood at the Indiana farm of my grandparents. My father hadn’t visited since his first prison stay. My mother came and went, always with a promise to return one day and collect me for good, a day my grandmother assured me would never come.

Then my grandmother died, and my grandfather was so distraught that he told my mother to take me away from the farm. I’m not sure who was more shocked, me or my mother. The decision was announced on the day of the funeral, when mourners surrounded my grandfather with outstretched hands and tearful eyes and parted around my mother as if she were Typhoid Mary, even her gaze contagious.

They all knew the story of Savannah Cody and Nickel Terhune and, of course, me, the bastard son. They pitied my grandfather and scorned my mother. I think it was recognition of that, even in his haze of sorrow, that led Grandfather Cody to announce—in public, no less—that he wanted her to take me north.

He had never supported her choices, but he refused to condemn her. His voice was the last one on the matter of my mother. Entrusting her with me was his quiet rebuke to all the locals who pitied him for his living daughter as much as they did for his dead wife. It suited him.

My mother had never sought my company, but she wasn’t about to argue, certainly not there in the church with my grandmother stretched out in the casket up front and all those judgmental locals looking on. We boarded the train for Huntington together and passed three uneasy weeks in her small apartment while she read classified ads and smoked cigarettes at the tiny kitchen table and handed me pulp novels that were unusual offerings for someone my age. I enjoyed the books but dreamed of returning to the farm with its orchard and mill pond and hayloft with a view of the Ohio River. I’d been named Alford as a nod to the Old English word meaning “river ford” and I took great pride in that, the name holding a quality of adventure. I loved the farm and had wanted for nothing during those Depression years—except, of course, parents. I hadn’t felt their absence acutely, though. They were more legends than losses in my life.

As the days passed, I began to fear I’d never leave Huntington, let alone return to the farm. Then my mother was inspired to commit murder.

“We will need Dad’s car,” she said, squinting into the mirror, tilting her chin left and right, up and down. “The Lincoln, I’d hope, but I’ll bet you a dollar he won’t part with it, and we’ll end up with that old truck.”

She leaned closer to the mirror, her blue eyes narrowing as she studied hair that—now that the gray intruder had been vanquished—shone like raven’s feathers, with the high gloss that came from careful care.

“If she’d studied her books the way she studied the mirror,” my grandfather had observed more than once, “she might’ve seen the son of a bitch for what he was.”

The son of a bitch in question was my father, Edward “Nickel” Terhune, a national villain but a sort of disappointment even in that regard, a subordinate in a pack of gangsters led by Al Brady. While my father made it into newspaper articles frequently, he never made the headlines. That was a strange thing to find vexing, perhaps, but once you grew used to the burden of infamy, you at least wanted to earn the boldface type. It was like having a father who played for the Yankees but as a utility infielder. More exciting than most careers, sure, but still privately discouraging. He would never be Gehrig, not even the Gehrig of gangsters.

“Yes,” my mother said, her sentry’s eyes alert for another strand of gray, “it is past time to kill him. Why, I should’ve done it years ago.”

“I don’t think he’ll be easy to find,” I ventured hesitantly.

“We can’t be pessimistic right out of the gate, Alford,” my mother said. “It’s easier to talk yourself out of goals than into effort.”

I was fascinated by the way she talked exactly like my grandfather while living in opposition to his every worldview. It was as if she’d memorized the text but misunderstood it. He would’ve said the same thing about mending a fence that she’d just said about murder.

“Besides,” she said, smoothing her hair with one palm, then the other, evidently satisfied that all gray had been eradicated, “the rent’s due Monday, and I’d rather not pay it.”

And so we were off, packed by sundown. It didn’t take long. My mother lived light in the way one had to when one might take off for another town on a whim. The belongings we took to the train station fit in a suitcase and one ancient steamer trunk that we held between us. My mother held the trunk with her left hand; her right was occupied with a typewriter case, which seemed an odd accessory for a woman of meager possessions and unknown employment. Holding the suitcase in my left hand and the handle of the trunk in my right was about all my puny twelve-year-old frame could bear, but I was determined not to look weak in front of my mother, who historically had commented on little about me beyond my lack of stature.

“Feed the boy more,” she would tell my grandmother, the conversational equivalent of lowering a lit torch to a dry wheat field. My grandfather’s dialogue with her was equally spirited but left me with the sense that beneath their arguments lurked affection. My grandmother was ashamed of her; my grandfather was disappointed in her. There was a difference.

“Some people find trouble and some people hunt for it,” my grandmother would say. “Savannah is a trouble hunter.”

“And you don’t know where that came from. You just found her, I suppose,” my grandfather would respond. “Like Moses in the bulrushes.”

That would usually buy him both a sour look and silence, and I think he was happy to accept one if he got the other.

The idea of returning to the farm even in pursuit of a vehicle to kill my father was welcome. I missed the place terribly and my grandfather even more. He’d always told me that his daughter was an impulsive creature, and I was not to blame him for her or seek to understand her behavior, in that order. As with most of his advice, I took it to heart. He’d been a detective with an outfit called the Burns Agency in his younger years, before that private-investigations business shifted to strikebreaking, at which point his appetite for the work dissipated. He returned to his hometown and married my grandmother, his childhood sweetheart. He was the antithesis of my father in every way, known and respected in our valley as a gentleman of the highest character.

If I could simply make it back to him, I knew I could convince him to keep me.

We rode the swaying train south from Huntington, across the National Road, out of the flatlands north of Indianapolis, and on into the steep wooded hills that had been scoured by the advance and retreat of glaciers. Beneath us was cave country—there were four on my grandfather’s property alone, and once he’d taken me across the Ohio River to see Mammoth Cave. The caves had also been important to my father’s family, though for different reasons; it was an ideal spot to hide moonshine. The Terhunes lived fewer than ten miles from the Cody farm, but I’d never spoken to any of them. They were famous for their whiskey, which they distilled on the Ohio or Indiana side of the Ohio River, depending on the enthusiasm of the police in either state at the moment. The liquor business in those years had been illegal, and yet the whiskey runners were not regarded as criminals by anyone except the devout, such as Grandmother Cody. Grandfather Cody never missed a Sunday service but couldn’t help snickering when the minister got on about some of the Old Testament stories, Noah’s ark being the one he found most amusing.

“Now, that man was a shipbuilder,” he would say, and chuckle, and my grandmother would shoot him a look that carried none of Christ’s lessons.

I also knew that during Prohibition, Grandfather Cody hid a flask or two of Terhune family whiskey behind a false wall in the barn, a fact he’d shared with me one day as if to allow some greater understanding. It clearly mattered to him to tell me that it was Terhune liquor, the implication being that while he couldn’t publicly endorse the business of my other bloodline, he could appreciate it. Grandfather Cody was judicious when it came to the use of my last name and opposed my grandmother’s effort to rename me Alford Cody due to my father’s infamy.

“Men have sins and men have sons, and if we’re going to acknowledge the first, I’ll be damned if I don’t acknowledge the second,” he said, and his voice was low and loud, a timbre I’ve tried to match my whole life without success, soft thunder that conveyed command.

When my mother called him from the train station in Madison and told him of our unsolicited arrival, I could hear his booming “Not interested” in response, the words so loud I blushed, sure that others had heard our rejection from family. My mother, however, took it in stride.

“Now’s no time for joking, Pa. Alford is here, and he’s in positive despair without you. Don’t forget, he’s still young enough to believe some of your stories.”

His beloved Lincoln-Zephyr arrived an hour later, and he unfolded from the driver’s seat and surveyed the scene with his customary assessing gaze. He was well over six feet, stood ramrod straight, and had snow-white hair and a mustache cut crookedly, longer by a full inch on the left side than the right. This was intentional, as he loved nothing more than for someone to ask him about it, at which point he’d explain that he was left-handed and “the mustache helps me recall my dominant side.”

“This is what passes for humor to Cody,” my grandmother would say with a sigh. Even she called him Cody. I once asked if she’d ever called him Wendell, his first name, and she’d thought about it for a moment before saying, “Maybe in the wedding vows.”

Once he’d satisfied himself with a patient look around the station, he crossed the parking lot to us, took the suitcase from me, and squeezed my shoulder.

“You’re taller,” he said, a simple lie that he knew I wanted to hear. Then he turned to my mother, his bright eyes dimmed a little, and said, “One week.”

“One week of what?” she said breezily.

“You may stay for one week if you’re not working. We can have a conversation about the boy’s future. I’m tired of wasting my breath on yours.”

This was welcome news, as I wanted nothing more than to be back on the farm and expected nothing more from my mother than for her to discard me.

“Oh, we won’t be staying a week,” my mother said, striding toward the Lincoln, tugging me along on the other end of the trunk. “We’ve business to attend to in Ohio.”

We, I thought, panicked. I had envisioned her committing my father’s murder solo, which was easier to stomach.

My grandfather snorted. “What’s in Ohio?”

“Eddie is,” my mother said calmly.

Grandfather Cody pulled up short. “Savannah. Do not tell me you’ve been in contact with that man. I’ll leave you standing on this station platform.”

My mother was unfazed. She kept walking, which meant I did too, towed in her wake.

“No contact. It’s the last place he was seen, so I expect it’s where we’ll need to start.”

We reached the Lincoln and she lowered her end of the trunk. I gratefully followed suit. Grandfather Cody stood in the slanted afternoon sun and stared at her, then at me.

“Alford, what’s my daughter talking about?”

I hesitated. When I looked at my mother, though, she gave me a smile and an encouraging nod.

“She, uh… she means to kill him, sir.”

Freed of the trunk’s handle, my mother was able to withdraw her hand mirror—what she called a compact—from her purse. She flicked it open and studied herself, smoothed the makeup under her right eye.

“That’s not something to joke about,” Grandfather said.

“Certainly not.” She closed the compact and put it back in her purse. “It’s business. If any of your stories are true, you’ll understand. Supposedly you tracked men—and even killed a few of them.”

“Those were bad men!” he snapped.

“Eddie is not one of the most-wanted fugitives in the country for his virtues.”

My grandfather looked heavenward.

“It’s the same task,” my mother insisted. “Track down the bad man. You of all people should understand.”

“I was paid to do it!”

“Well,” my mother said, “that’s a perk I admittedly do not have. There is, however, a reward for the capturing or killing of any member of Brady’s gang. Fifteen hundred dollars.”

The wind blew off the river and gusted the humid summer air at us as my grandfather and mother faced each other down like gunfighters.

“It’s time to take the shame off Alford’s name,” my mother said, placing a hand on my shoulder. It was one of the few times she’d touched me. She wasn’t a hugger, my mother.

“Take the shame off Alford’s name,” my grandfather echoed incredulously.

“That’s right.”

“Where were your thoughts of shame when you took to my hayloft with a moonshiner!” he bellowed, then looked guiltily at me and muttered, “Apologies, Alford.”

I nodded, though I suspected I’d never look at the hayloft with quite the same fondness again. My mother wrapped her arm around my skinny frame, embracing me as tightly as she ever had.

“Why, there’s no shame to that,” she said. “I’ll take my fine boy with pride and gratitude. I hope you might find it in you to do the same one of these days. But we can’t allow his father to simply run roughshod over his reputation in the meantime.”

My grandfather, who’d tended to my every need while my mother wandered and my father alternately fled from police and shot at them, put a hand to his forehead as if to check for fever. There was no one on earth who could frustrate him as completely and swiftly as my mother, and he hated that she knew it. I could almost hear the thoughts buzzing through his mind, words of counsel about not losing his temper, reminders not to take the bait.

“I’ve managed to overlook,” my mother said, “the fact that my son’s own grandfather claims he is a skilled investigator and yet never bothered to pursue the man who destroyed our family’s dignity.”

“Destroyed our dignity,” my grandfather said softly, almost reverently, and again he cast his eyes skyward, a plaintive posture that reminded me of the painting of Job in my grandmother’s Bible.

“Well, it’s exactly what Eddie did, and I don’t intend to bear it forever,” my mother said. “I don’t have your patience.”

The snort this provoked from my grandfather was loud enough to attract a concerned look from a passerby.

“She doesn’t have my patience,” Grandfather Cody said to him, as if this stranger had been in the conversation to begin with. “You’ll never hear more authentic gospel from the pulpit, sir, I can promise you that.”

The stranger smiled weakly and hurried by.

My mother rapped her knuckles on the trunk of the Lincoln. “Dad, unlock this car. It’s sweltering, and poor Alford’s had a long journey. Think of the boy, please.”

I tried to convey my innocence to Grandfather Cody in a single, desperate glance, which he registered knowingly.

“She requires an accomplice, son,” he said. “I’m familiar with the routine.”

My mother smiled at this as if she’d overheard a compliment, then my grandfather loaded our suitcases. My mother kept her typewriter.

“I’ll hold it on my lap,” she said when my grandfather reached for it.

He looked at her thoughtfully. “What’s really in the typewriter case, Savannah?”

It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be anything in it other than the Remette typewriter, but it was a fine question. The device didn’t suit her, as I’d noted.

“The gall you have,” my mother replied. “It is a typewriter.”

“Let me hold it, then.”

“No.” With that, she opened the passenger door, dropped into the seat, and folded her hands on top of the typewriter case. Grandfather sighed and surrendered.

We drove to the farm. My mother cracked the window and lit a cigarette, ignoring my grandfather’s scowl. She took a deep drag, blew smoke that the wind caught and threw right back into my face, and said, “I would love a lemonade.”

“There are places,” Grandfather Cody said, “called restaurants. They accept things called dollars—ideally, these are earned through honest labor—and then provide the beverages of one’s choice. I can drop you at any of them.”

My mother laughed and patted his leg.

“Put that cigarette out,” he said. “I’ll not have my car all fogged up.”

“The window’s open.”

“You remember Elizabeth Fernald?”

“The boring girl from up the road?”

“She has two sons and two daughters, a fine husband, keeps house, and sells the vegetables she grows. Some days when her husband is busy, she even helps pump gas at his service station.”

“She always had the hands for that,” my mother said.

“She’s a serious-minded woman, is the point.”

“Gosh, I’m glad you helped me find the point. Tell me, do you see any contrast between Elizabeth’s life and my own? A subtlety that eludes me?”

“There’s a sin in my past, Alford,” my grandfather said, startling me with the direct address. “I don’t know which one was enough to cause such a dire reckoning, but it’s out there. It surely is. A man earns his fate.”

I knew better than to respond to that, so we rode on in silence and cigarette smoke, chasing the river and the setting sun. I was glad to be home. I thought I would stay there, and I would’ve wagered my soul that nothing on earth could pry my grandfather away from the farm in pursuit of my father.

I was not yet fully familiar with the force that was Savannah Cody.

5

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: Why did Nickel leave your hometown?

Knocking up the farmer’s daughter has never been a particularly prudent way to remain employed at a farm.

To Eddie’s credit, he made an effort. He didn’t run off and hide the way the newspapers make out, not at all. He stood right beside me in the parlor when we told them. You can imagine the reaction. Dad didn’t say a whole lot, but he’s an intimidating presence when he wants to be, and this was when he was in his prime physically. He towered over us and put the fear of God into Eddie, but he didn’t need to say much, because that was my mother’s department. I doubt the words sin and shame have been used more frequently in any pulpit than they were that day in her parlor. She threw Eddie out of the house so she could have a run at me alone, and he came back the next day and tried again. Told her how sorry he was for violating her trust and how he intended to be a good father to her grandchild. Well, that didn’t go over the way he’d hoped.

The day after that, he came back again, marching right up the drive, and this time he brought bluebells for her. They were gorgeous flowers, as bright as my son’s eyes. They were also Mother’s favorite, and he knew that because, believe it or not, he’d been trying to read that foolish book her grandfather wrote. There are whole pages carrying on about the beauty of Virginia bluebells. I’ve never understood how cannons could blast apart a thousand men and acres of battlefield and yet leave the wildflowers. Anyhow, Eddie tried. She wasn’t having it. Took the flowers from his hand and threw them into the dirt. So much for forgiveness. As I said, she was more of an eye-for-an-eye lady.

That was the last time Eddie came to the house to speak to her directly. There was no point, and we could both see it. I’ll admit I was a little distracted, being pregnant and not wanting a child. I was sixteen years old and supposed to go to college.

Mother found a lodge of some sort where pregnant girls could go off and have their babies and come back pretending they’d been away at finishing school, working on their posture and learning how to hold a dessert fork. Dad refused to send me. I was surprised by that, considering he was being blamed almost as much as me, him for having hired Eddie in the first place. But he was adamant on that issue, and he was shrewd in the argument. He quoted her silly book right back at her, a sentence about the perils of hiding your sins. There were only two ways to win an argument with Mother: Quote the Bible or quote her grandfather’s book. There was so much overlap, it was hard to tell the difference. Anyhow, he won the argument, and I was allowed to stay. I’ve often wondered about that. How would things have turned out if I’d gone off to have the baby in secrecy?

Toland: Do you wish you had done that?

I’m not one for regrets, but if I’m being honest—and why not, considering the circumstances—I suppose I have to say it crossed my mind a few times before I got to know him.

Toland: Him?

My son. Alford. We were apart so much, it was easy to feel disconnected. My “reputation” was known in the community, but I also didn’t have the child. She was raising him. It wasn’t all that different from giving him up for adoption at times. But then later, in those months on the road leading up to this, when I got to know him? I couldn’t imagine having given him away anymore. He’s my son. He’s my one good legacy. And Eddie’s. Don’t leave him out of this. We combined to cause some trouble, and we combined for one wonderful thing.

6

NICKEL

IN THE BACK SEAT of the stolen Studebaker, Nickel strapped the pillowcase tight around his calf, gritted his teeth, and knotted the loose end. The pain made him gasp, and Al Brady looked back.

“You dying?”

“Nah.”

But wasn’t he? Hard to say with all that blood. Just a leg wound, but men had died from leg wounds before. Nickel had never been weak-kneed at the sight of blood, but this was different, watching his own pool on the Studebaker’s floor, shivering as the car’s tires thrummed along. He closed his eyes. Sweat dripped down his brow, salted his lips.

“We got a chance?” Nickel asked, wishing the steering wheel were in his hands.

“We got a chance,” Brady confirmed, and then there came a warm whistling gust as he cranked the passenger window down again. Nickel thought about opening his eyes for the action, decided against it. The blood was pumping against his palm and the air felt furnace-hot and he thought that he might be sick. Better to stay low and let the shooting start, and what happened, happened.

As if on cue, Brady opened up with the Thompson. Staccato gunfire, glass breaking, the sirens still coming, louder, louder.

“Steady out!” Brady barked, and the Studebaker slalomed sideways, then straightened as Dalhover fought to keep it on the road. He was always too reckless, treating the car like something to be wrestled into submission rather than led like a dance partner.

A pause, then more thunder from the machine gun.

The sound of the crash opened Nickel’s eyes. He tried to push up, couldn’t get high enough to see what had happened, but Brady’s triumphant whoop, that warpath cry, told him plenty.

“Son of a bitch must’ve bitten off twenty fence posts before he flipped!” Brady yelled, dropping back into the passenger seat. The sirens, one fewer now, fell back. The second car—maybe there were three, it was hard to tell—had either thought better of close pursuit in the face of the gunfire or stopped to check on their comrades.

Nickel took a breath and watched his pooled blood tremble. He adjusted the pillowcase, using the weight of the jewels as best he could to apply pressure. It would have been nice, he thought dimly, if they’d at least gotten a better haul. There wasn’t much to the bag.

“They’ll be pulling corpses out of that car,” Dalhover said, watching the mirror, his mad-dog eyes bright. If they pulled any corpses out of a police car, this thing ended not with a cell but the electric chair.

Maybe it had gone that far already.

“Get off the highway,” he instructed, remembering that Dalhover had the wheel, and Dalhover had shit for brains when it came to the map.

“We need speed, man!” Dalhover barked.

“Speed in the wrong direction is just a faster way to die. Get off the highway!”

“You ain’t drivin’!”

“And that’s the problem, damn it!”

Brady broke in and asked why Nickel wanted off the highway. His voice was almost calm.

“Because they’ll be expecting panic. They’re feeling it, and they think we are too. Slow down and remember the map. These county roads are grids. North for a few miles, then pick a fast straightaway and go west.”

If they’d listened to Nickel back in West Virginia, there would be no need for debate. He’d have had a route map taped to the dashboard, with alternatives, a system that removed panic from decision-making. It had worked for many of the men he’d jailed with in Michigan City, but Al Brady and James Dalhover were too impulsive. That was why Nickel usually drove. He didn’t need the reminders.

“You sure we should go west?” Brady asked.

“I’m sure we should get off the fuckin’ highway.”

“Then what?” Dalhover put in.

“We gotta figure out a doctor for Nickel,” Brady answered.

“A doctor?” Dalhover said, tires shrieking as he banged a right off the highway and onto a dirt road, the impact so jarring that Nickel bounced airborne, then landed hard, putting a fresh pulse of pain through his leg. “We’re not walking him into a hospital!”

“No.”

“Well?”

Brady was silent, thinking about it. They rode north, then turned again, a left this time, west, toward the Indiana line. The sirens were scattered and distant. Nickel suspected that wasn’t entirely due to good luck; once the radio reports of the Thompson machine gun went out, a few of the fainter-hearted officers wouldn’t mind driving in the wrong direction.

The Indiana State Police, on the other hand, would be ready. Roadblocks going up, cars circling, the net drawing tight. No time to stop and steal a different car; not out here in the sticks, anyhow, with Nickel wounded. Get into a town, buy some time, stay alive. First things.

Brady looked back. “How bad did they get you?”

“It’s no jackknife cut.”

“Bullet go through?”

Nickel prodded the wound, felt something shift that brought white light to his eyes, an object so undeniably foreign that he had a faint hope it was one of the gemstones that had slid loose.

It wasn’t.

“Bullet’s in there.”

“We’ll find a doctor.”

“They’ll arrest us as soon as we reach the office door,” Dalhover said.

“Won’t go to an office, you dumb bastard. We’ll find one at home. Indianapolis.”

“And say what?”

“Hunting accident.”

“What’re we hunting, dressed like this?”

Brady went silent for a moment.

“Okay, forget the hunting. We say he’s our buddy and he got clipped by a jealous husband. He can’t have the story go public, naturally, because then his own wife will find out.”

“Nobody’s believing that bullshit.”

“They will.”

Nickel, closing his eyes against the pain and the argument, had a vision of Savannah Cody and thought that if he’d made it as far as the altar with her, he could imagine such a story being true. Her eyes when she was angry? Yes; Nickel would have done whatever he could to avoid coming home to her with a story like Brady just came up with, even showing up at a strange doctor’s house with a shot-up leg. She was beautiful, but she was wild. Wilder, maybe, than even Nickel. Hell, no maybe about it. She was the one of them born to the road, and yet he’d found his life on it. He might’ve been a mechanic, nothing more, if not for bad luck and foolish friendships.

It was so much easier to blame the world than your own choices.

He’d been Eddie when he went into prison, nobody calling him Nickel yet. He wasn’t sure when exactly he’d gotten the nickname and nobody was clear on the origin story. Dalhover told folks it was because he’d done a nickel in prison, but Al Brady told people it was because Eddie Terhune was so mean, he’d kill you over a nickel. In truth, Nickel hadn’t killed anyone yet and was as bemused by his own nickname as he was by the speed and circumstances that had befallen him.

He fixed cars, that was all.

Then he’d fixed a gun. He was swell at fixing things.

“We won’t sell that shit story,” Dalhover said, breaking the silence. Nickel didn’t open his eyes.

“I think we will,” Brady responded. “If not, well, we’ve got guns, don’t we?”

7

ALFORD

THE TROUBLE BEGAN because my grandfather was gone when my mother heard the police bulletin about the Brady Gang.

That morning at breakfast, Grandfather Cody suggested ways she might make a living or find a good man while she ignored him and pored over a collection of newspaper articles relating my father’s exploits, then turned to a road atlas and pondered which town was most likely to appeal to Al Brady’s gang as a hideout.

“Aren’t you supposed to be skilled at this?” she goaded my grandfather. “What did you really do during those years when you pretended to be a detective?”

“I didn’t pretend a damn thing.”

“Well, then, I’d think you could be of some help. I mean, truly, not even a suggestion!”

“Here’s one: There is a Help Wanted sign in the delicatessen.”

“William J. Burns was considered the greatest detective of his day, Alford,” my mother told me, as if my grandfather weren’t present in the kitchen. “Though there are those who say that was all publicity, mythmaking, no different than Davy Crockett.”

“I thought Davy Crockett was real,” I offered, which didn’t help the situation, as it made my grandfather slap his hand hard on the table, sloshing his coffee over the lip of the mug.

“Now, do you hear that, Savannah! You’ve got the boy questioning the existence of an authentic American hero!”

My mother waved a dismissive hand. “You’re in the wrong room to convince anyone of the authenticity of a man wrestling grizzly bears, Pa.”

“They were black bears.”

“This is more plausible to you?”

And so it went.

I didn’t mind the arguing all that much, which was a surprise, as I was averse to conflict. My mother’s personality lessened the tension. She seemed to have no temper at all, was indifferent to Grandfather Cody’s most stinging rebukes and amused by the rest. She effortlessly got under his skin, but he couldn’t lay a glove on her. I had yet to meet anyone who could. It was easy, watching her breezy good nature, for me to imagine that her plan to murder my father was a farce… and yet I couldn’t quite do that, because it seemed my grandfather believed her.

“Let the police do the police work, Savannah,” he said, voice grave. “If the man’s to be shot, it should be by the law, not by his wife.”

“We were never married.”

“Now, there’s an element of the story I’d forgotten,” Grandfather Cody said. “How could it have slipped my mind?”

Exasperated, he left and took the truck into Madison to buy fencing with Swede, our farmhand; my mother turned on the radio, and my life changed when the signal clarified out of static, carrying word of the robbery in Lima, Ohio.

“Pack the car, Alford,” my mother said. “He’s surely long gone from Lima by now, but it’s a place to begin.”

I stared at her. She intended to… steal the car?

“It’s a quest,” she said, seeing my hesitation. “Your grandfather understands a good quest, despite all indications to the contrary.”

“I’ve got to paint the fence,” I said, gesturing at the endless stretch of fresh planks that required replacement after the winter’s flooding. The painting was my job. I’d never been more eager to return to it.

“Your grandfather and Swede know how to hold paintbrushes.”

I still hesitated. She was my mother and yet it felt strangely like a kidnapping.

“We should talk to him before we take the car,” I said.

“I’ve already explained the situation, Alford. He’s clear on the plan. Did I not say quite plainly that we are off to kill your father?”

She had done that.

“If I leave you here, it will give him the wrong impression about my willingness to accept the mother’s role,” she said.

I desperately wanted to ask if she believed a mother’s role was to be a car thief and premeditated murderer, but I was afraid of her and said nothing while she walked to the Lincoln. I went only as far as the porch. She opened the passenger door and stood with her hand on a cocked hip, impatient, waiting.

“Don’t be disobedient.”

I gave up and trudged to the car. The big door banged behind me like jailhouse bars. It was the first time I’d ridden in the passenger seat of the big Lincoln. That had been my grandmother’s position.

“You’ll be the navigator,” my mother said, passing me the atlas. It was the Chicago Tribune’s Automobile Road Map of the Northeastern United States, and the cover advised that similar editions were available for the Northwest, Southwest, and Southeast. I wasn’t sure if my mother had triangulated the Brady Gang’s location based on evidence or if this was merely the only map she had.

The dirt lane to our farm ran south, and when she turned right off it, I hesitated to correct her. I didn’t want to be in the car to begin with, but I was, and she’d tasked me with navigation.

“Ohio is east,” I said.

“Very good, Alford.”

“East is behind us now. You turned the wrong way.”

She gave a delighted laugh. “Right out of the gate, no less! Your grandfather would love that observation. But—this time, anyhow—it’s not a mistake. We have one stop to make before Ohio.”

“Where’s that?”

“Floyds Knobs. That’s where your father is from. His family is still there.”

The idea of meeting any family on the Terhune side appalled and terrified me.

“I don’t think they’ll know where he is,” I said. “The police would’ve found him by now if they did.”

“That’s probably true,” she agreed, driving with one hand while lighting a cigarette with the other. “Still, he might call from time to time.”

“You think they’ll tell you if he did?” I asked.

“No. But I think they will tell him that I’m coming, and I want the son of a bitch to know that.”

8

ALFORD

THE TERHUNE FARM in Floyds Knobs looked nothing like ours. It seemed criminal that the two operations were both called farms, because the Terhune property wasn’t a farm so much as a flophouse, the barns and animals afterthoughts on a blighted landscape. The previous January, terrible flooding had savaged the Ohio River Valley from West Virginia to Indiana, leaving behind mudflats and millions of homeless people. Our own land had been covered with debris, the fencerows wiped clear, the lower orchard’s mature trees swept away as if they had been so many dead leaves in the wind. The Terhune farm seemed bleaker than any of the fetid homesteads I’d seen that winter, but the Terhunes couldn’t blame the flood. Maybe it was just the Depression?

“They’ve gone bust,” I murmured, hardly aware I’d said it aloud, but my mother snorted.

“You can’t go bust unless you’ve held some cards, Alford. The Terhunes didn’t need the Depression’s help to go broke.”

She drove the Lincoln up the rutted lane, past a single red wheelbarrow that seemed to be the only thing on the property that held color, everything else washed-out browns and grays, from the house to the fields. It had been dry but not dry enough to cause this. It was as if the land had gone so long without proper tending that it had forgotten itself in February, refusing to put on any green come spring.

We came to a stop about twenty feet from the porch, where a fox-colored dog lifted its head and curled its lip but didn’t rise. The dog looked savage to me, but my mother climbed from the car without hesitation and walked toward the porch. I was content to stay where I was. The whole place was ominous, the dog only one of the threats.

When she realized I wasn’t behind her, she stopped, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Alford.”

“I’m the navigator,” I called back weakly, then lifted the road atlas as if to make a case for my need to remain at my station.

“Get out here,” my mother said. “I want the bastard to see you.”

It was hardly encouragement, but I left the atlas on the bench seat and climbed out of the car. I’d just reached my mother when a man of my grandfather’s height but not half his weight stepped out onto the porch.

“What in the hell do you want, Savannah?” His voice held the same slow menace as the dog’s curled lip.

“I was hoping to see Eddie. Is he working in the field or the barn?” She made a show of shielding her eyes with her hand and scanning the desolate grounds.

“You think that’s funny,” the tall man said. “All the pain the boy’s caused, and you think it’s funny.”

He stood at odd, disjointed angles, like a scarecrow after a storm. Arthritis, probably. I thought that was good, as it might slow him down. I hoped the dog had it too.

“I don’t think a bit of it’s funny, Frank,” my mother said, lowering her hand. She nodded in my direction. “I’ve been raising his son without assistance while Eddie’s off thieving, whoring, and killing. You tell me what’s amusing about that.”

Silence as the old man’s hate rose like heat. For the first time, I was aware of my mother’s calculated distance. She spoke without fear but stood closer to the car than the porch.

The dog broke the silence first, with a growl that started deep and rose to a harsh crescendo snarl, the kind it might utter while standing over a kill. I moved a step back. My mother stood firm.

“I see the dogs retain your charm now. Eddie could always fix them. Could coach your meanness out of their spirits.”

“Get off my property,” the old man said. “I ain’t got time or patience for this.”

“There are two options,” my mother replied. “One, I leave you with a message that you’ll deliver to Eddie and I take a bottle for the road. Two, I leave you with the boy.”

I looked at her wildly. She didn’t so much as glance at me.

“Like hell you will,” the old man said.

“You’ve shared none of the burden.”

“Burden! That little bastard has been Cody’s concern, not yours, since the day he was born.”

“And did you offer my parents assistance?” my mother answered. “In twelve years of this poor child’s life, has any Terhune offered a single day or dollar toward his well-being?”

“Way I hear it, you’ve offered about as much as me.”

“You hear it wrong. Tell him, Alford.”

Tell him? He didn’t have it wrong. He was pretty close to the truth, in fact. My mother’s eyes demanded my voice, but I had no idea what words she wanted. I was just about to mention that I was happy to wait in my grandfather’s car until he arrived to claim it when the dog growled, almost as if sensing that I was about to speak and warning me against it. I stayed quiet. My mother frowned, then returned her attention to the old man.

“You can see he’s been brought up well enough to mind his tongue even when he’d be justified in a harsh word,” she said. “Not much Terhune to him.”

The old man grunted. He had the thinnest chest I’d ever seen, concave, like a stillborn calf’s.

“Now,” my mother continued, “let’s return to the negotiation.”

“You ain’t leaving him.”

“Then you’ll deliver the message and give me the bottle.”

It occurred to me—as I’m sure it already had to the old man—that it was hard to follow up on whether someone had delivered a message, and thus the bottle could be viewed as the sole reason for our appearance.

“I don’t speak to Eddie,” the old man said.

“Nevertheless, you’ll find a way to tell him that I’m on my way.”

“Your way where?”

“To him,” my mother said, a blade’s edge beneath her breezy tone, “with his son. You’ll find a way to tell him that, Frank. And the bottle needs to be from the oak barrel. I’m sure you still have some on hand.”

The old man braced himself as if in the face of a hard wind.

“The oak barrel,” my mother repeated firmly.

For a long moment, silence and stillness.

“Alford,” she said, putting a hand on the small of my back, “unload your bags. Frank will show you to your room.”

I looked at her, astonished and now nearly shaking with fear. Surely, surely, she didn’t intend to leave me in this forsaken place. But her eyes held no warmth, only conviction, and when she extended the car keys to me and looked at the old man, I thought that he must have felt the same way, because he moved without a word. The front door opened and closed, floorboards creaked, and then he was back, a long glass bottle in his hand, amber-colored liquid inside. He came as far as the top step and held out the bottle, refusing to walk down into the yard.

“Do you see that, Alford?” my mother said. “Frank’s so worthless, he’d rather give me illicit liquor than get to know his own grandson.”

She crossed the yard, plucked the bottle from his hand, and held it up to the sun, studying it with an appraiser’s gaze. She pulled the cork, sniffed the contents, and nodded, satisfied.

“I’d like to pretend I had higher hopes, coming here with your grandson and an opportunity for you to embrace family, but I knew better,” she said. “Give Eddie the message, Frank: We’re on our way.”

“Get the hell out,” he said. I was the first to oblige, already seated with the road atlas on my lap by the time my mother reached the car. She handed me the bottle.

“Take care with that, Alford. I don’t have much praise for this pitiful family, but they do make the finest whiskey on either side of the river.”

I said nothing, clutching the bottle with both hands and praying that the Lincoln would start before the old dog found some energy or the old man found a gun. My mother cranked the motor to life, backed the car up, turned it, and headed for the road.

“That went as well as I’d expected,” she said. “Better, in fact. I wasn’t sure about the oak barrel. High demand and low supply.”

I stayed silent. We reached the end of the lane before she glanced at me.

“I hope you didn’t mind the pretense. I’d rather not use you as a cudgel, of course.”

“What’s a cudgel?”

“A weapon.”

“Oh.” It was the right sentiment, and yet not cruel enough. No one would discard a good weapon. My only power was in being unwanted.

She stopped the car. Frowned at me. “Alford, surely you know I never would’ve left you there.”

My look said enough, because she nodded, a glimmer of shame finding her eyes.

“We’ll need to improve our communication to become proper collaborators.” With that, she patted my leg and returned to driving.

Collaborators. A fine term for mother and child.

We reached the highway. I watched the rearview mirror for my grandfather’s truck. The road was empty.

“On to Ohio,” my mother cried joyfully, turning left, the river glistening, the morning sun bright behind us.

“You’re going the wrong way again,” I said.

She braked hard, then ground the gears as she shifted into reverse. “This is exactly the spirit of partnership we need to develop. Well done! Communication! See how it changes things? I’ll try to improve at my end. No more surprises from me.”

I watched the fence lines blur by, wondering whether it would’ve been better to let her head west. Probably. I had no map for that part of the country. In the absence of a trusted caretaker, a map felt crucial.

“If there are no more surprises,” I said, “then what are we doing next?”

“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” my mother said, and she lit a cigarette.

9

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: You said your son, Alford, was the one good thing that came of your association with Nickel. How often did the boy see his father?

Other than the times you already know about, not often. My mother was the reason they didn’t at first, but then Eddie started to make the papers and him visiting was not an option. I mean, you people were coming by our farm all the time, watching, as if he’d be foolish enough to show up with another bouquet of Virginia bluebells.

One time, when Alford was maybe two or three years old, I’d come down to visit him, and Mother and Dad went off to church. They wouldn’t miss a Sunday service for the world, but I feel those get a bit repetitive, don’t you? I mean, we all get the gist. So I stayed home with Alford, and there wasn’t any objection, because Mother didn’t want to be seen with me. I was the tarnish on the family silver.

It was a perfect spring morning, April, I think, and I was playing with Alford in the yard. He had a little wagon, and we’d load it up with his toys and he’d tow it around, working those chubby little legs like a draft horse. I laughed so hard, watching him. He had a serious way about him even then, like everything needed to be mastered in a hurry. Walking, talking, reading—he was always the first one of his age to do those things. I’m sure you and everyone else believes that credit goes only to my parents, but I had something to do with it, and so did Eddie. We’re in the mix, like it or not.

Anyhow, we’re out in the front yard there, in the shade of that big beautiful Dutch elm that came down in the storm last winter, and suddenly I hear a whistle. I knew right away who it was. There were nights when I was sixteen, I’d hear that whistle in the darkness and head straight for the hayloft. But on that morning, I hadn’t seen a car, hadn’t heard an engine. I turned around and there was Eddie, wearing a suit and holding his hat in his hand, looking like a gentleman. He was so handsome, the best-looking of all of them, including Dillinger and Pierpont. The tallest too.

I said, “Where in the world did you come from?” He’d parked way down on the river road and walked up just to be sure I was alone. Alford stopped towing the wagon around and went up to him, bold as a lion. That was unusual, because he was a shy boy. Mother could teach shyness well by then; she’d struck out at that task with me, but I was valuable practice. Watching Alford walk right up to him, I could tell… he knew. Sensed the blood, the family. He was so comfortable, and that wasn’t his way with strangers. Eddie knelt down and put out his hand, as serious as if he were meeting a judge, and said, “How do you do, young man?” And Alford shook his hand and said his name and then Eddie reached up and took off his hat and put it on Alford’s head. It sank down and covered half his face, and I was sure he was going to cry, but he just pushed the brim up and tilted his chin so he could see.

I would give anything in this world to have a photograph of that moment: Alford, so serious, wearing the big hat, and Eddie, young and handsome, grinning at him, so happy. The big tree beside us. Nothing bad had happened yet, not really. Our situation was less than ideal, but it wasn’t… how do I say this? I couldn’t imagine how badly it would go.

Did I tell you the tree is gone now? Oh, I already did. Well. Sorry, I got a little misty. It’s just a crystal-clear memory of a day that was filled with opportunity, that’s all. With possibility. Eddie gave Alford a yo-yo and one of those wooden whistles that makes a sound like a train signal. We had almost two hours together. Then my parents were due back, and Eddie left.

That would’ve been the last time they were together.

Toland: Where were you living then?

Indianapolis, mostly. Eddie was working hard—don’t look at me like that, he was! He was a mechanic at two garages in Indianapolis and had a part-time job on weekends at a place down the road in Martinsville. He could fix anything, and word travels about a man like that.

Toland: At what point did you become aware that Nickel was participating in criminal activities?

You could simplify that by saying crimes, and I’ll thank you to stop calling him Nickel. It’s a bad nickname and I won’t use it.

When did I learn he’d committed a crime? Hard to say. I mean, these things are a sliding scale. Please—you know I’m right. Why do you think there’s a whole book of criminal codes, from misdemeanors to felonies? If it were simple, there’d be a lot fewer lawyers, and they’d be much poorer. Interesting how that hasn’t happened.

I suppose I understood that the cars he was fixing were stolen. Then again, I knew before he ever showed up at our farm that his family made moonshine, so you could take my awareness of criminal association back as far as you wish. I didn’t know the cars were being used in robberies. I just knew he was fixing the vehicles, and they were stolen.

Toland: What was your reaction to that situation?

Understanding. I mean, the man needed money. He’d tried to win my parents over and failed, and he was unemployed. That didn’t mean he wasn’t serious about doing right by me. Back then, that meant something to him. He intended to support his child. I won’t say it was the smartest way to go about the task, but it was entrepreneurial. This country loves ambitious men when their plans work out.

Toland: And you lived with him right up until he was arrested?

Yes, but I was working too. It wasn’t as if I didn’t earn my share. I was a waitress. Dinner shift, mostly—I never cared for waking up early. Dad always says that I could sleep half the day away, but my argument is that nights are more beautiful anyhow. A lot of folks never really see the stars.

Toland: Were you waitressing for the criminal element?

The criminal element. You really are too much. What a phrase, my goodness. I didn’t check the police files on my customers. It was just a tavern on the south side of Indianapolis, a place called the Tremont House. Two-story brick building.

Toland: There are rumors that the Tremont House serves more than cocktails.

There are rumors that your boss, Mr. Hoover, has an unnatural relationship with his mother. Don’t look at me like that; you’ve heard them. All I served at the Tremont House was drinks and dinners, and I’ll thank you to get that part accurate in your notes.

Toland: Was Dillinger a customer?

You all are still obsessed with Johnnie, and you people shot him dead years ago! Or did you miss him and put another man’s corpse in the casket, the way some folks think? You want to talk about rumors, there are plenty about that.

Toland: Answer my question, Miss Cody.

Johnnie may have come in, sure. I don’t recall. I remember Harry Pierpont was in, but he’s dead now too. Al Brady, James Dalhover, half of the most-wanted criminals in America at one time or another probably passed through the Tremont House. That doesn’t mean I had anything to do with them. We were trying to make money, that was all. Eddie was working hard, I was working hard, and we had a notion that soon we’d have enough for a house. Something simple but nice, the kind of place where you could raise a family. Then we’d drive back down south and get Alford.

Toland: Why didn’t that plan come to fruition?

You’re so smug when you ask questions you already know the answers to. It’s not a becoming quality, Agent Toland, I can assure you of that. I see the ring on your finger that says you’re married, and I would advise you to hang on to that poor woman at all costs, because it is a damned difficult thing for a smug man to get laid, let alone married. Oh, what are you going to do if I keep talking like that, charge me with more crimes? I’m already sentenced to death, so intimidation isn’t really a strong card for you to play right now. I’m offering good advice from a woman’s perspective, and you’d be wise to heed it.

Yes, yes, I remember the question: What kept us from buying the house and raising our son together. Well. It’s probably imprudent or at least unkind for me to blame a woman who can’t defend herself, but I would say my mother had a great deal to do with it.

The trouble started in Martinsville. I’ll tell you, I’ve never cared for that town. Eddie was working for two garages during the week and then heading south on Saturdays to pick up some extra income at a service station in Martinsville. Mind you, he was only fixing the cars. Then one Sunday night, we’re sound asleep, and there’s a knock on the door. The kind of knock only you people know how to give. The police came in and arrested Eddie, had him in handcuffs before I could even get decent. They charged him with being part of a car-theft ring based in Detroit, smuggling stolen cars south. Eddie had no idea about all that. The job paid cash, and he—we—needed the money.

Toland: What does this have to do with your mother?

I’m getting there. It has to do with her because he needed a character witness. I went home and told my parents what had happened. I had all the details, and I could show his wages, everything. It had been honest work and he hadn’t even made a mistake, not that time. He just showed up with his wrenches at the wrong garage, that’s all. The prosecutor had no evidence that Eddie was aware of where the cars came from or where they went. He had nothing. And we were so close. Back then, we were only a few months away from having enough money for a house and a clean start. All he needed was a good lawyer and some help in front of the jury. Dad could have helped, or my mother. She refused, and she wouldn’t let Dad come up and speak on Eddie’s behalf, even though I think he would have. She said—I’ll never forget this—“It is time that you and Edward learn about the wheels of justice.” Justice! If ever there was injustice, it was sending Eddie to a place like Michigan City for a silly thing like showing up to work for a dirty businessman. The business owner, by the way, got two years in the county jail. Eddie got five in the state prison. That’s the difference between having a good lawyer and some fancy friends and being alone in the world. So I suppose my mother was right. Eddie and I, we learned plenty about the wheels of justice.

He was never the same man after Michigan City.

10

NICKEL

JUST WEST OF Richmond, across the Indiana line, Al Brady turned on the radio and they listened to the news bulletin.

“Pursuing police officers from the town of Lima, Ohio, joined the chase and were fired upon with a machine gun, causing a severe accident. Two officers are badly wounded, and the Lima police department says one of the heroic men, Captain Joe King, may not survive. The bandits are believed to be the same men who robbed the Kay Jewelry store in Lima just a few weeks ago: Al Brady, James Dalhover, and Edward ‘Nickel’ Terhune. They were last seen westbound in a black Studebaker sedan, and the danger these men present to the public cannot be overstated. They are each armed with pistols and there is at least one machine gun in the vehicle as well as multiple shotguns and rifles.”

“The hell there are,” Dalhover said. “We got no shotguns, zero. These fucking reports, they make no sense. Who said there were shotguns? I’d like to meet him.”

“Shut up,” Brady said, and clicked the radio off just as the broadcaster began talking about roadblocks and FBI assistance.

They had yet to see a roadblock. Not as surprising as it seemed. The Depression had thinned the municipal budgets, and a lot of the small-town cops didn’t like the idea of waiting to meet a machine-gun-equipped car from out of state. The state police were a problem, but if you stayed off the highways, you could avoid them. Good thing was Nickel knew every back road in Indiana, had grown up running moonshine with his father on dirt roads traveled by more horses than cars. They’d sold plenty of bottles to police on either side of the Ohio River, so he’d never felt much pressure from the law. Every now and then, cops came and busted a barrel or two with an ax—always judicious about which whiskey they spilled, not wanting to waste the prime product—and Nickel’s father ended up in the Jefferson County jail for thirty days, the kind of show that kept everyone happy and let the liquor age.

This show would be different.

The electric chair. The problem was the FBI and its brash young director, J. Edgar Hoover, who had never met a microphone he didn’t love. With him came new laws about crime across state lines and an outcry over gangsters like Dillinger and Nelson and Floyd. Al Brady hungered to join their ranks; he truly enjoyed seeing his hawk face with that big beak of a nose on a Wanted poster. The federal agency had changed the consequences.

So had dead cops. The same broke farmers who didn’t mind seeing a bank robbed had quick hate for a cop-killer. If the police officer from Lima died, that would seal it. Even fifty years wouldn’t be enough then. It would be the electric chair, no question.

They drove on in silence, everyone wondering the same thing—where could they go that wouldn’t end with a shootout. There had been doctors, not so many years earlier, who would have helped. For a moment in time, the peak of the Depression, a decent amount of the American public rooted for the gangsters. And why not? Banks lost your money, you lost your house, and all the bankers did was shrug. That Robin Hood respite hadn’t lasted, though. Today, even the greediest sawbones wouldn’t take a call if he risked an interview with one of Hoover’s agents.

Even knowing all that, Nickel could not have conceived of the way Brady set about finding a doctor: the phone book.

They parked by a grocery store on the east side of Indianapolis and Al went in, bold as a bantam rooster, and came back out with the phone book. He put it on the hood of the car and started flipping through it, and Dalhover joined him. They were white men on the Black side of town, so they drew attention. They’d certainly be remembered, but Brady intended to be long gone by the time the cops came and asked, and besides, he liked to be remembered.

“There was a guy in Michigan City, had a sister who was married to a doctor,” he said, flipping pages. “Hanes or Hanson or something was the last name.”

“How the hell is knowing an ex-con brother-in-law going to help us?” Dalhover said.

“Leverage.”

“Only leverage we got fires bullets, Al, and you know it.”

Brady ignored Dalhover, kept searching through the book as they stood in front of the car. Nickel’s only job was to stay low, out of sight of the windows, and that was fine, because it was about all he felt capable of doing. The heat had risen to an intolerable level. He wiped sweat from his face, felt the clammy moisture on his fingertips. No good. Fever sweat for sure. Brady and Dalhover weren’t sweating, and they were standing in the sun. That made him feel even worse.

He could barely see them from his position on the floor because they were both short men. Brady, who was maybe five six, always stood with a little lift of his chin to try to compensate, and he was taller than Dalhover. Nickel believed they might’ve been better tempered if they’d had a few more inches. Short men carried themselves one of two ways: quietly, content to be out of sight, or dramatically, making scenes, trying to show the world they had some quality—craziness, usually—that made up for the lack of stature. There were a lot of short cops too. Probably wanted the badges for the same reason Brady and Dalhover wanted the headlines.

“Maybe Hanchell?” Brady said, still peering at the damned phone book looking for his doctor. “There’s a Dr. Charles Hanchell here—that sounds right.”

“Hayes or Harrison or Hanchell, I don’t give a shit!” Nickel bellowed suddenly, surprising Brady and Dalhover. “I need a doctor is all. Pick one.”

“Shut up,” Brady hissed, looking up the street. “Don’t need the attention.” Brady ripped the page out of the phone book, jammed it into his pocket, and returned the phone book to the store. They’d just come shrieking across the state line spraying bullets and watching police cars careen into ditches, and Al Brady didn’t want to steal a phone book? Nickel laughed, but that shook his leg, moved the throb out of his calf and into his chest, so he stopped.

“Broad Ripple,” Brady said, getting back in the car, Dalhover behind the wheel. “Maybe thirty minutes from here. Quiet place. I know it. We’ll get in and out, and then…”

“Then what?” Dalhover said. “Chicago?”

“Yeah,” Brady said, but he didn’t sound convinced. Chicago was, of course, where Dillinger had died in the street.

The car roared to life, putting a thrum of pain through Nickel’s whole body. With an effort, he mustered a single word through gritted teeth:

“Kankakee.”

“What’s that?” Dalhover said.

“Kankakee Marsh,” Brady said. “Smart call. That old hunting camp, that’s what he means.”

“That’s right. Nickel Plate Gun Club.”

“It’s got the right name for you,” Brady said, and Nickel thought, I’ll be damned. Is that where my name comes from?

It might. He’d worked at the gun club as a boy. It was called the Nickel Plate Gun Club on account of the Nickel Plate railroad and was a magical land of river and woods, the forests alive with game, the waters teeming with big fighting fish. His father had run whiskey up there—plenty of it—and one time he’d forgotten Nickel, just drove off and left him. Nickel wasn’t unhappy about that, it being so beautiful, so he’d worked for the camp, cleaning fish and sweeping out cabins for the guests, rich folks from all over. There were a bunch of the sporting clubs in the area back then, ranging from grand lodges to canvas tents, some houseboats even. The hunting had been bountiful, but the old-timers always said it wasn’t so much as a memory of what had been, when the skies turned dark with ducks and geese. Most of the marsh had been dredged and drained, but there were a few of the old sporting camps left, and once, feeling flush after a series of good robberies in Kentucky and Illinois, Nickel had convinced Brady and Dalhover to go up and rent a cabin for a couple weeks. They had a hell of a time fishing and shooting ducks. That was back before their faces were on posters all over the country, but he thought he knew the terrain well enough to find cover.

“Think they’ll recognize us?” Dalhover said, his mind evidently where Nickel’s was.

“Maybe,” Brady allowed. “But places like that, you put cash on the table and take your key to the cabin and that’s the end of it. The Chicago boys are in and out all the time. It’s a good spot.”

It was a good spot—if Nickel made it there. He closed his eyes, remembering the place the way it had been back in the autumn of 1914, all those rich folks, most of them kind, the market having not yet fallen and war having not yet started, generous with tips, especially if you knew where to find the fish. One thing Nickel could always do was find the fish. A guide by the name of Jake Sietke had taken him on as an apprentice of sorts. Jake was appalled that Nickel’s father had driven off without him. The old fishing guide took him in and for a few wonderful months, it had been every day on the water, searching for muskies that went four feet long and had teeth like something prehistoric. That was where Nickel had learned to shoot. What a place it had been. Making campfires down there on the bank, listening to the animals talk, the marsh as alive with sound as any city, only prettier noises. Then the gun club needed another load of Terhune whiskey and Nickel’s father was back. Jake Sietke asked Nickel what did he want to do, adding that he’d become a skilled hand and could stay if he wished.

Nickel never forgot that moment. There was nothing good waiting at home, and every day at the Kankakee was like something from a boy’s dream, hunting and fishing and crisp air and kindness. The choice should’ve been obvious, but the problem was simple. Your father could forget you, but you couldn’t forget your father.

“If he asks after me, I’ll need to go,” Nickel said, and Jake Sietke had looked dismayed by that, but he didn’t dispute it. He paid Nickel twenty-five dollars, this man who’d taken in a near orphan and taught him the ways of the woods and water, and it was only later, in the swaying truck home with his father’s belt marks on his back, whipped for failing to volunteer the money Jake paid him, that it occurred to Nickel that he could’ve simply rowed out in a boat and hidden for a few hours. His father never would’ve waited, let alone wasted time in pursuit.

Nickel never saw Jake Sietke again.

They neared Indianapolis, Dalhover driving slowly. Smart, but also excruciating for Nickel. The heat from his leg had found every nerve ending. The day was warm and dark, clouds thickening in the west, the bright green leaves turning over on the maples and oaks, the air still, all of it promising a storm. Brady kept the radio off, and they drove in silence except when he gave a direction, turn here or straight there. They were in a neighborhood of wide lawns and white picket fences and brick homes, the air smelling of freshly cut grass. Laughter from kids. Everything safe, everyone oblivious to the Studebaker and the machine gun inside. The doctor was such a helpful citizen that he was identified as an MD right there in the phone book beside his home address. Some doctors in the Midwest had stopped doing that in recent years, hid behind their office numbers, afraid of what a visitor knocking on the front door might need. Not Dr. Charles Hanchell.

Nickel suspected he’d be changing his listing for the next edition.

“Number thirty-seven, up there on the left,” Brady said.

Dalhover pulled over at the curb, but Brady shook his head, said go right up the drive. “You want us to have to carry him in there, get a look from everyone on the whole damn street?”

“Pretty fuckin’ easy to block us in a driveway, Al.”

“Just do it.”

Dalhover went on up the driveway. The car passed under a portico or whatever the word was for that kind of overhang that shaded the side door of a nice house. Port something. There, in the shadows, Brady told him to cut the engine.

“I talk,” he said. “You keep your gun hidden, unless…”

He didn’t finish that thought. Didn’t need to.

“We’ll be back, Nickel,” Brady said, and then they were out of the car and Nickel was alone, listening to distant thunder. A tall hedgerow bordered the left side of the car, the house on his right, white trim and thin sidelight windows, a gleaming brass knocker. The sidelights were marbled, reflecting a warped world back at him, offering no sense of the inside of the house.

A woman came to the door. Nickel’s heart sank a little at that, a memory of the brunette in the yellow dress curled on the floor of the jewelry store coming back to him. This woman wasn’t screaming, though—not yet, anyway. She was talking warmly and generously, although with some confusion, saying “My goodness” this and “Of course” that and then they were all gone, the door closed behind them, the waterfall world of the marbled glass obstructing Nickel’s view. She must be calling her husband, summoning the good doctor.

He pushed up, wincing, and tried to see what was happening in the house. The opaque glass refused him. He looked down the drive, grateful for the high hedges that stood between the car and the neighbor’s yard. You’d have to be standing right behind the Studebaker to see it. There was a garage up ahead styled to look like a carriage house. The power lines ran to the house and the garage, both with electric lights and even a telephone wire. Must be nice, living like this. Must be real damn nice…

His vision blurred as the pain walloped him, and he dropped back down and gasped, wondering what in the hell was taking Dalhover and Brady so long.

Keep your head clear, he instructed himself. Remember the story. You’re married and your wife shot you.

No, that wasn’t right. How had he already gotten confused on simple fiction? Because it was so easy to imagine Savannah Cody shooting a gun at him, probably. Funny how in his private stories, she became the wife. There’d been other women in his life, plenty of them, mostly by the night, and yet the only one he could conjure with lasting power was Savannah. He needed to stop thinking foolish thoughts, though, and remember the story right, the one Al had told. It was…

I’ve got a mistress, and she’s got a husband. He came home and caught us and took a shot. And I can’t go to my own doctor, because…

Fever and pain, dark confusion. Because why?

Because it’s got to stay a secret.

He’d kept secrets with Savannah before. Their lovemaking, for one. Their son, for another. He hadn’t intended to run out on the boy—or Savannah. They’d talked of heading west, Montana, maybe farther, California, all the way to the Pacific. Maine had been another idea. Raising a family someplace new, where her mother wasn’t there to deploy judgmental words like a prison guard’s searchlight. They’d come close to leaving together once. Then… well, it hadn’t worked out. There had come a day in Anderson followed by a night in Franklin that was the end of it, never spoken of, but always understood. A lot had changed in a few hours. Minutes, really. Remarkable, how such crucial elements of a life could vanish so quickly.

Voices came, and Nickel’s eyes blinked open, and he saw a nervous young man with a thin face and blond hair, a starched white shirt rolled up along his forearms, eyes blue and bright, peering at him through the window.

No, not the window—the door was open. Nickel had missed that somehow, but he could feel it now, because the spring storm was closing in fast, a humid pressure system waiting to burst.

“Get him inside,” the young man said.

Brady and Dalhover dragged Nickel out, Al going on a mile a minute about how it had been a bad mistake and no fault of theirs, but a friend was a friend, and they didn’t want to see his marriage ended over this foolishness.

They carried him into the house and he got his first clear look at the woman—redheaded and green-eyed and with a figure that probably caused men to miss stop signs. She grabbed a sheet from a linen closet and put that down on the davenport and then Brady and Dalhover put Nickel down on top of the sheet. The house was all gleaming wood and crisp paint and high ceilings with a faint smell of lemon.

The redhead looked at Nickel with wide, curious eyes, as if he were the most exciting thing to come along in a while, which he suspected was the truth in Broad Ripple. Her husband, the young doctor, had narrowed eyes, wary, the kind of gaze that called back memories of judges and prosecutors. Must have been an expression they passed out in colleges. Take your diploma and this What do we have here? stare.

“We’ll call an ambulance,” he said.

“I told you, Doc, he can’t afford that!” Brady said. “It’ll be his marriage and his job if that happens. Please. We were told you would understand.”

“By whom?”

“Just look at him,” Brady implored, ignoring the question. “You took an oath, didn’t you? The man’s been shot!”

“I can see that,” the doctor said. “Marilyn, call an ambulance.”

Dalhover intercepted Marilyn when she moved for the phone. Not an aggressive approach, just a few steps to block her path, but it was enough. She stopped; the doctor stopped; everyone stood there like deer in hunting season, high alert indicated by an absolute lack of motion.

“Help him, Doc,” Brady said, and the wheedling-bullshitter tone was absent from his voice now, command in its place. Everyone was giving up the game.

“Who are you?” the doctor asked, looking at them one at a time, memorizing faces.

“We’re the houseguests you didn’t want,” Brady said. “All you need to know. Now, you’re a doctor, and that man is wounded. There’s a bullet in his leg that needs to come out. When the bullet comes out, we leave. Don’t you want us to leave, Doc?”

The wife, Marilyn, was frozen in mid-stride, like an actor in a play, left hand extended, the phone waiting on a credenza three steps away.

Dalhover unclipped the line, dropped it to the polished wooden floor.

Brady withdrew his gun, casual, held it against his thigh.

Marilyn lowered her hand, stepped back, looked at her husband.

The doctor swallowed. Said, “Please.”

“Please,” Brady echoed pleasantly. “That’s more like it, Doc. Polite. How I tried to be from the start. Now…” He motioned at Nickel with the gun. “Help my friend. Please.”

The doctor didn’t move.

“Don’t study on my face too long, Doc,” Brady said, and the mad dog was creeping up in him now.

The wife said, “Chuck,” in a soft, imploring voice that told Nickel she’d also heard the mad dog’s paws. Women usually did. Like children, they often paid the price for the unfocused anger of men, and they remembered the primal warnings.

“It’ll be fine,” the doctor said.

“It may be fine,” Brady said. “Let’s not be too damn confident. Longer that bullet stays in my friend’s leg, the less sure you should be about this situation.”

Outside, thunder, the hedgerow rustling as a gust of wind swept the yard.

“Chuck…” She said it again, and this time her husband turned from Al Brady and looked at Nickel. His eyes were hot with hate, and Nickel knew that he was already making the kind of excuses men like him made to explain why they’d caved, talk of wives and kids and protection, responsibility, never saying it plain: The other guy had the gun.

Most of the big decisions in life were simple. It was the small choices that ate you up.

“I’ll need my bag,” the doctor said, a tremor of self-loathing underscoring each word.

Dalhover and the wife went to get the doctor’s bag. Nickel closed his eyes. Outside, more thunder, and the first hard pellets of rain struck the windows, loud as bullets on an Ohio highway. Nickel smelled the warm rain and thought of the Kankakee Marsh. The fish would be biting now. Always did on the front edge of a storm like this. He could make it there once more—provided the doctor worked fast and well, and nobody noticed the stolen Studebaker.

Dalhover and the wife returned. Dalhover had the doctor’s bag; she had two clean white towels.

For my blood, Nickel realized, and he almost thanked her but knew Brady wouldn’t like that, so he tried to signal it with his eyes. She met his gaze, but all she looked was frightened, unaware of his gratitude. Dalhover grinned, leering at her breasts when she leaned over and put the towels on the arm of the davenport. The doctor saw Dalhover’s stare as clearly as Nickel had, and his face flushed as he withdrew a scalpel from the bag.

A long day was about to get longer.

11

ALFORD

WE WERE ALMOST to Dayton when the reports of my father’s injury filled the car.

“The wounded bandit is believed to be Nickel Terhune,” the somber-voiced announcer said. “Police are asking hospitals across the Midwest to be alert for a man matching Terhune’s description seeking aid for a gunshot wound in the leg. He is approximately six feet one inch tall, one hundred and seventy-five pounds, with dark hair, blue eyes, and a crescent-shaped scar in the center of his forehead. All the bandits are armed and dangerous. Civilians in Ohio and Indiana are to keep their homes and vehicles locked and to report any suspicious activity to authorities immediately. Do not attempt to approach the men.”

“Too late for me to heed that advice,” my mother observed, and snapped off the radio.

I felt at once claustrophobic, trapped in the bullet of a Lincoln, and oddly detached, like a balloon drifting somewhere above and behind the car.

I didn’t know my father personally, and I was certain that he was bad—perhaps evil, as my grandmother had often suggested—and yet… he was my father. To feel no sorrow at all over news of his shooting seemed wrong. Certainly I couldn’t be as flippant about it as my mother, whose only reaction was annoyance that she was driving—yet again—in the wrong direction.

“My intuition was flawless,” she said. “I kept turning west because that’s where the son of a bitch was headed, Alford. Uncanny! And all the police detectives are men. What a waste of natural brains.”

“Do you think he’ll die?” I asked.

“I hope not.”

I looked at her with surprise, touched by her compassion.

“It would be a damn shame if he bled out before I found him,” she continued. “And what becomes of the reward if the capturing or killing is done by a police officer? They’re already being paid a salary; accepting a reward would be unseemly.”

So much for compassion.

“Let’s have a look at that map,” she said, and rattled the Lincoln off the highway and onto the shoulder of the road. She perused the atlas while a gusty wind blew thick, storm-scented air that swept her dark hair from left shoulder to right, and distant thunder boomed. I watched as she turned the map upside down and I was struck by a horror more acute than the idea of my father being a bank robber: Was my mother illiterate?

“Can you not read it?” I blurted.

She shot me a sharp glare. “Excuse me?”

“Well, you just turned it upside down!”

“It helps me visualize.”

I’d never encountered before—nor have I since, for that matter—anyone who was worse with navigation than my mother, but she studied the upside-down map with a contentment that suggested she was indeed more comfortable with it.

“He’ll want to head back to the river, because he loves the river, always has. It was what he liked best about your name, Alford. The idea of crossing water. If he’d had an ounce of patience to balance the pounds of foolishness, he’d likely be a fishing guide instead of a felon. Or at least he’d be both.”

It sounded so much like my grandfather’s style of proclamation that I checked the mirror, as if she might have summoned him. An old truck rattled by, but it wasn’t his. It seemed impossible that he would find us at this point, after hours of aimless driving, unless he’d called the police to report the theft of his car by his own daughter, which would mean that both my parents were currently on all-points bulletins. I thought my grandfather would wait a day or two before doing that, but I wasn’t sure—he loved that car.

“Now, Al Brady doesn’t like the river, and Al Brady is the boss,” she continued, eyes still on the upside-down map. “So your father will be overruled, and where does Brady go? Someplace familiar. Run back to a den they know. For Al, that would be Indianapolis.”

She pointed a finger confidently at the map. Tilting my head to follow along, I saw that she’d identified Columbus, Ohio, but she tossed the map back onto my lap, pulled back onto the highway, and swung a U-turn.

I imagined my father heading in the same direction with a bullet in his leg. I touched my own thigh involuntarily. The leg was the best place to be shot, perhaps, but there were still major arteries in it. You could die from a bullet in the leg. I winced, thinking about the radio report, then spoke almost without thinking:

“They made him taller.”

My mother erupted with a gale of high, delighted laughter and slapped the steering wheel.

“I love that you noticed! I thought I was the only one. He was five eleven when he went into prison, six feet after the shootout in Anderson, and now he’s six one! What are they feeding inmates in Michigan City, Alford, that’s what we need to know.” She laughed again. “It’s the witness testimony, I suspect. Eddie towers over wee little Al Brady and James Dalhover. Also, he has fine posture.”

This was the first compliment I’d heard her pay my father. Bizarrely, I was moved to sit up straighter in the passenger seat. I liked the idea that he was the biggest of the three, at least. The newspapers always referenced him last. I felt a strange desire to encounter the cruelest of my classmates, Carl Lamborn, so I might mention that my father was not only the tallest of the crew but also the only one to have taken a bullet. This was the gangster equivalent of the utility infielder belting a home run and stealing a base in the same game—suddenly, the crowd took notice.

“I also like the bit about the scar,” my mother said, chuckling. “That’s nice to hear.”

“They’ve used it on the Wanted posters.”

“I’m sure they have.”

“Did he get in a fight?”

“Not exactly. He got clipped in the forehead, though, and he did bleed.”

“Did someone hit him with a gun?” I was thinking of comic books and Zane Grey Westerns, where the villains often pistol-whipped innocent men.

“It was a high-heeled shoe. In the back seat of a DeSoto.”

I was about to ask how she knew this, then had a sinking feeling that it related to a story similar to the one I’d recently heard of the hayloft.

She chuckled again. “I’m glad the old wound gives him credibility, though.”

I went silent, uneager for further details. I thought of the farm we’d visited, the old man and the vicious dog, and shivered, imagining a childhood in such a place. “They always had dogs like that?” I asked.

“What?”

I realized I hadn’t offered a preamble for my comment.

“At the farm with… Frank.” I couldn’t bear to call him my grandfather. The idea of his blood within my own was horrifying. “There was that awful dog, and you said something about how Eddie could coach the meanness out of them.”

“Oh, yes. That was true enough. Frank likes guard dogs—they scare the revenuers, scare the neighbors, scare everyone. He has never been one for unannounced visitors, whether they come with badges or Bibles. So he bred the poor beasts to be savage. Your father could not abide that. He had a soft spot for animals. I think it was because Frank treated the dogs about the same as he treated his son, kicking whichever was closest.” Her voice betrayed the faintest touch of sympathy for him. “Eddie could train them. Could… reclaim them, I guess that was the word. It drove Frank wild, because he wanted them mean, and Eddie would soften them up. He always managed it. Back then, anyhow. I’m sure now he’s just as likely to kick them as pet them. Enough years with Al Brady will do that to a man.”

We roared for Indianapolis. My mother was a terrible driver, but she was fast. An exotic combination. Most bad drivers I knew went slow, aware of their shortcomings and attempting to compensate. My mother seemed to think increased speed would straighten things out for her.

“They won’t be holed up at a hotel or any respectable place with a sharp-eyed clerk,” she mused as she swerved past a milk truck. “More likely a boardinghouse or hot-sheet joint—you know the type of place.”

I did not, but it was nice to hear her confidence in me, so I murmured my agreement.

“The problem with that,” she continued, “is that the police know those locations too. They’ll be checking those spots first. And with the recent media attention and the reward, even Al can’t be as bold as he once was.”

“So what does that leave?” I said. “A tent?”

“Brady would never be caught in a tent. Your father would; he’d just as soon sleep under the stars as in a perfectly nice home, but not Al Brady.”

Again, I felt a strange appreciation for my father. The man was drawn to the outdoors, like me.

“It will be someplace busy,” she said. “Enough traffic for them to blend in. Chicago, maybe, but that’s a long drive, and each hour on the highway is risky. They’ll need to change cars too. What matters is how badly he was wounded.”

She thought like a villain without much hesitation. It wasn’t the most reassuring quality in one’s mother, but she had my interest.

“Would they leave him?” I asked. “If he’s hurt so bad he needs a doctor, do they dump him in a ditch and run?”

“Never. Loyalty to the men who ride with him is one of Al Brady’s few positive traits.”

Just east of Indianapolis, we encountered a roadblock. There were two police cars parked alongside a barricade that limited traffic to a single lane, and cars crawled past as officers scrutinized the occupants, waving the vehicles ahead only after careful perusal. My mother put on the brakes and beckoned the police closer.

“Do you have leads?” she asked.

The officer was a tall, broad-shouldered man with a ruddy face and blue eyes that suggested annoyance until he got a second look at my mother. Then he softened, smiled, and said, “We’ll get them, ma’am. Don’t be worried.”

“It’s hard not to be, with men like that on the loose,” she said. “I’m grateful you’re here.”

He seemed suddenly grateful himself, resting one palm on the Lincoln’s roof so he could lean closer. He eyed me briefly, then returned his attention to my mother.

“You just drive carefully.”

“I certainly do. Tell me, do you think they’re still in the Studebaker, the one they mentioned on the radio?”

“As far as we know. But my guess is they’re off the road, hiding out like rats.”

“I bet you’re right. You haven’t heard reports of any other cars to be concerned about, though?”

Perhaps a stolen Lincoln? I considered asking, but I kept quiet.

“If they’ve switched vehicles, I haven’t heard of it,” the officer assured my mother.

Behind us, a horn blared. The sound had become familiar to me in the past few hours, so I scarcely reacted, but the police officer straightened and glared at the cars behind us with a raised index finger, indicating he’d take what time he needed.

“Everyone’s in a damn hurry. Pardon my language, ma’am. Anyhow, you don’t need to be afraid. Drive safe and—”

“I’ve met them, you know,” my mother said conversationally, as if remarking on the coming thunderstorm.

“Pardon?” He blinked at her, the honking driver behind us forgotten entirely.

“Al Brady, James Dalhover, and Eddie Terhune. Met all three of them.”

The young policeman didn’t seem to know exactly what to do with this information. Before he could respond, she pressed him.

“They were always trouble, as you can imagine, but I’ll tell you this: I don’t think the roadblocks will help at all. They know the territory too well.”

“Is that so?” he said, bewildered.

“I’m afraid it is. Obviously, you all haven’t had much luck with this approach to date.”

The horn came from behind us again, and my mother answered with a blast of her own, a reflex action that came so fast, it seemed to shock the policeman.

“Sorry,” she said, giving him a blush. “I’ve got a quick trigger finger. I’ll leave you to your work now, Officer, but do me a favor: If you catch them here—and I don’t think you will, but if—remember the name Savannah Cody. There’s money owed, and I intend to collect.”

With that, she drove off, nearly rolling over the officer’s foot. I twisted to look back and saw him standing beside the roadblock, staring after our car.

“He’s too surprised to look at the license plate,” I said.

“Well, why on earth would he look at my license plate? I’ve done nothing wrong.”

“You stole the car.”

“Oh.”

I dropped back into the seat. “Why did you tell him your name?”

“For the same reason we visited your father’s farm: It’s important to build word of mouth. Let the legend grow. Spread the name far and wide, and eventually the news will reach your father.”

“But you say you intend to kill him.”

“That’s correct. It’s a vile thing for you to have to consider, and I’m sorry about that, but it’s his own doing.”

“Well, then, why would you want him to know you’re looking for him?”

She smiled at me, veering into the opposite lane. “Because that’s when he’ll make the mistake, Alford. Your father is prone to mistakes as a rule, but he makes more of them when I’m involved.”

It was an odd disclosure, considering her audience, and yet I was able to appreciate the strategy.

“You think if he hears enough people say you want to find him, he’ll start looking for you, and not the other way around?”

“Smart boy. Yes, Eddie will forever turn around at the sound of my name if he’s able to. It’s his fate, though he doesn’t grasp that yet. He’ll come back despite any better inclinations. And then I’ll have him.”

I looked down the highway at the looming thunderheads and wondered if Nickel Terhune might be better off running into a roadblock than my mother.

“I’m glad you reminded me about the car,” she said, and it seemed genuine, as if she’d completely forgotten the source of the vehicle she’d sped through two states in. “I should give Dad a call. Besides, you’re probably hungry.”

We hadn’t eaten breakfast or stopped for lunch. “I could eat,” I allowed, more because I was eager to get off the road.

“We’ll stop soon. I need some time with the map and a phone book. I don’t remember all the hotels Al Brady liked, but I know enough about his habits to make some educated guesses. More than that wide-eyed boy with the badge back there does, I promise you that.”

12

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: He served years in Michigan City. Where were you during those years, and did you maintain contact with his associates?

You mean the big criminal enterprise, with the lieutenants and the big boss? I’m sorry, it’s hard not to laugh, the way you people talk about it.

Where was I during those years? All over. I left the farm for good. I blamed my parents for letting him go to Michigan City then, and I still do. My father knows I’m right. He can admit that. He and I have a different connection than I ever had with my mother. I sense his feelings because he was never allowed to speak of them in the house. It’s funny to strangers, because he’s this big man with a deep voice and was a detective out west, so they assume he ran our place. That’s not true. The actual boss was five feet nothing with gray hair held back with bobby pins, wearing plain navy dresses and acting as if she were two pennies from poverty when in reality she was one of the wealthiest women in Indiana. What’s the point of having all that money and influence if you won’t use it to save a good man from a bad fate? But of course, she thought Eddie was bad from the start, so… the wheels of justice. Let them turn.

I left and went to work at the fancy hotel up in West Baden Springs. Started as a chambermaid, but that work never suited me much, and it didn’t take long for them to realize that. I was better at serving and making conversation, particularly with the men. I can see the look in your eye when I say that, but it had more to do with all the practice I got exchanging fire with my father over the years. An only child, a daughter… I was kind of his accomplice in life.

The hotel was a fine place to work. Everyone who was anyone came through that hotel in those years. It was a grand building—but there was more corruption in that little town with its healing springs than there ever was inside the walls at Michigan City, I assure you. Where were your agents then? I know, I know, there was no FBI yet, the day had yet to be saved. I’m making a point, that’s all.

So I waitressed, and I visited Michigan City when I could. That was awful. It was a long trip on the Monon line, and then to see the place where he was… even from the outside, Michigan City is intimidating. It reminded me of something out of The Count of Monte Cristo. Don’t look at me like that; I can read. I’ve probably read more books in a summer than you have in your whole life, Agent. Do you know Dos Passos? I suspected not. You might learn a thing or two if you read that man. Try Willa Cather next.

Back to the question, yes, always back to the question with you, lest you learn something. Oh, how I hate my voice when I say that—I can hear my mother in it.

Michigan City. You’ve been there, so I don’t need to describe it, but you haven’t seen it the way I have, visiting someone you love and then having to leave, knowing they’ll be left in that horrid, cold place day after day and night after night.

Eddie was changing. I could see that, even if he couldn’t. Becoming harder. He didn’t have the easiest smile when he was younger, but it was a beautiful one. Shy. The kind of smile someone holds back because he’s afraid of being noticed, and when everyone in town knows your family and thinks they’re common trash, the root of all evil, you don’t want to be noticed.

In Michigan City, he lost that smile. I can’t imagine the horrors that took it from him. Can’t let myself, anyhow.

Toland: And his associates?

Right, the syndicate. Let me light this cigarette before I let you in on the big secrets. Al Brady came around to the hotel occasionally, but he never fit in with the crowd at West Baden Springs. He was small-time compared to them, all the gangsters from Chicago and New York and Baltimore. That ate him up, because he wanted to be respected the way they were. Men are such simple creatures when you watch them together: They respond to power and money. I read somewhere that you’ve got a whole roster of college boys working on figuring out crime trends now, a bunch of law-school kids turning crime into statistics. Any woman who has waitressed at a cocktail lounge for a summer could tell you more about crime trends than all the college-boy lawyers in the world.

Men are children. I won’t make it personal, don’t worry, so let’s use your boss as an example. The little mother’s boy. Physically unimpressive and financially insignificant. So how does Hoover make a mark? Gathering power. Go ahead and roll your eyes, but I’m not wrong.

Toland: Did you form relationships with these men from Chicago and New York?

I was nobody’s whore, Agent. You need to be clear on that or this conversation will come to an end. My “relationships” were my own business, and I might have “formed” a few of them in my years at the hotel; I don’t recall. Mostly, though, I waited for Eddie to be released. Wrote him long letters, made visits when I could afford to make them. Brought him books and things, but he was never much of a reader, not even in prison. He had the strangest love of maps, though. I remembered that from before—he loved to show me all the different routes you could take on the same railroad, how one station branched out into so many options. Once he was in Michigan City, that made more sense to me. He was trapped, and what is a map if not a page of possibilities?

Toland: Did you know at the time that he was planning routes for robberies and getaways?

I did not, and I’m still not sure that he was. But it makes sense that once his talent became known, people would ask him for advice. Dillinger did. So did Harry Pierpont. Homer Van Meter. All your favorites.

Toland: What were they asking him to do, specifically?

Plan the cat roads, of course.

Toland: Cat roads?

Back roads, little places off the highway that allowed you to get back on the highway later. The police always assumed anyone who robbed a bank would be going hell-bent-for-leather down the highway, that speed was the point. That was foolish, and Eddie understood it. He was a meticulous man. He would chart the route, turn by turn and second by second, then come up with alternatives. Later, when he was out and running the roads with Al Brady and James Dalhover, he’d write all this down and tape the charts to the dashboard. That way, even if the driver was panicked or injured, he had something to rely on. He built a system. People give credit for this to a German bank robber named Herman Lamm, but it was Eddie who was known as the Map Man of Michigan City. Now, was I providing the maps? Sure. But that was out of love, nothing more. I don’t care if you find that hard to believe. I’m a few hours away from being charcoal; why would I care?

Besides… the maps meant something to him. They really did. I brought him an atlas of the Northeast once simply because it was something different. Usually, I brought him maps of the Midwest. The one of the Northeast, that was an impulse, because I thought something fresh might inspire him. It sure did. He was fascinated with upstate New York, for one, but the place that lingered most was Maine.

He loved the map of Maine because it had the fewest roads. He said if you looked at the northwestern part of the state, the roads just went away, and it was all forests and water. He was so struck by that. It was the one thing that brought back the old smile for even a moment. I tried to find ways to encourage that smile. That hope. Most of them didn’t go so well. I brought him two books by Thoreau: A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and The Maine Woods. Let’s just say he didn’t spark to the prose. I should have known better than to try, but I thought they might be inspiring. Not one of my better ideas. The one thing that did work—or that did the worst damage, depending on your perspective of how things turned out—was a little guidebook with a postcard from a place called Moosehead Lake. That was where Thoreau went, but the guidebook was, how shall I put this… more to Eddie’s reading taste. Someone had left it in the hotel at West Baden, and there was a whole bit about an island called Mount Kineo, where there was another grand resort for rich people to spend the money they got tired of counting at home. You need plenty of those places, evidently, in a country where most people can’t afford to live. It must get downright brutal for the rich to have to ride around in the same towns looking at the same lovely houses. To keep from going insane with all that loveliness at home, they’re required to vacation. Mount Kineo looked like a Maine version of West Baden Springs. Well, that’s not accurate; nothing looks like West Baden Springs. Nothing ever has or ever will. That hotel is special, and it always will be—if someone comes along and saves it from its current condition. I worry about that.

Oh, I’m sorry, am I boring you, Agent Toland? Let’s not go on about hotels, fine, fine.

The point is, the map of Maine was exciting to Eddie. A place he’d never seen and could fill up with his imagination. We’d have long conversations about starting a new life there, with our son. Eddie loved the idea of teaching Alford to fish and snowshoe, never mind that Eddie had never been on snowshoes himself. We talked about opening a tavern up there, something simple, like the Tremont House where I was working in Indianapolis before he was arrested. A two-story brick building, nothing special, but a way to make a living. I’d manage the place, and Eddie would handle the booze. You can’t say much that’s good about his family, but they do know their whiskey. It was a nice thing for him to dream about. A simple life—no riches, no fame, just hard work in a clean hometown. You people act as if that’s easy to find. It’s not. It’s easy to lose, though.

When he finally got paroled, it was January, so cold my eyelashes froze. We went straight to Chicago, to the Palmer House, and got a room. Those were three great nights. He was almost his old self. Almost.

The problem was finding work. That wasn’t easy for anyone to find, let alone a man fresh out of Michigan City. The West Baden Springs Hotel had closed after the crash in ’29, emptied out almost overnight, it seemed, and I was living in a town with a name so awful, you couldn’t make it up: Gnaw Bone. I don’t mind admitting that I was ready to experience some new places.

It was only a matter of money.

Toland: Who was he working with at the time?

I love the formality. You all think of crime rings as some official enterprise, like a police department or a government bureaucracy, with ranks and recruits. But if you’re going to do that, at least get the grammar right. With whom was Edward Terhune working at the time? Well. There were some who would come and go, like Charles Geiseking. Clarence Lee Shaffer, he was there in the recent months and down the homestretch. Clarence Lee—I always used his first and middle names because it annoyed him—he was one of those little Napoléon types. He wanted to be respected and feared. I don’t think it ever worked for him. The others thought he drank too much, and that’s saying something, because they all drank plenty. But when Clarence Lee got into the bottle, he talked and he talked. Mostly it was bullshit made up to make him sound tougher than he was, but sometimes he’d get confused between lies and use a real name or a real place to fill in the gap. That always frustrated Al and James.

Toland: You mean James Dalhover?

Do I mean… are you kidding me? The one who’s going to follow me in that electric chair, correct. Want me to spell his name for you, make sure you’ve got the right fellow? I can tell you his first name is Rhuel. Ouch, right? It’s like talking after you got smacked in the mouth. Rhuel. I can’t blame him for going by James. He was the real deal, by which I mean he was more of a gangster than Clarence Lee. James was in the moonshining business early, same as Eddie’s family, and then he got busted down in New Mexico, and the way he tells it, that was a tough prison. I believe it. It’s funny, considering how famous Al became and the way you people called it “the Brady Gang,” but I always thought James was the hardest of the bunch. Eddie never got along with him. I don’t mean to say they had direct fights, but Eddie could be charmed by Al, and Al could make him laugh. With James, I think one look at him told Eddie the road was going in a bad direction. You don’t ride with a man like Dalhover and hope for a good ending. You just don’t.

13

NICKEL

THE DOCTOR GOT the bullet out of Nickel’s leg just before the thunderstorm ended.

He had his eyes closed, his teeth clamped on a leather belt, and the only known world was bright pain. Then came the sound of the bullet plinking into a ceramic basin that the doctor’s wife, Marilyn, had put out. The bullet had been within Nickel, and now it was gone, and the sound was the proof, the metal bullet clinking in the ceramic washbasin like a church bell tolling, announcing a new day.

He opened his eyes, blinked at the stinging sweat, and saw the doctor, Hanchell, looking at him with hate. Why was he so upset? Then Nickel glimpsed Dalhover and Brady and saw the guns and recollected the situation. They weren’t welcome here; that was the problem.

The woman, Marilyn, bent to Nickel and wiped the perspiration from his face, and there was, if not outright sympathy, at least a humanity to her eyes and her touch. He tried to thank her, but his words were a moan, and he closed his eyes, sank into the depths again, hoping that she’d understood the sentiment.

Thunder cracked, but it was distant, the storm gone from them now, same as the bullet from his leg.

This, he thought, was a good thing.

What Nickel didn’t yet know: The sun was coming out and, with it, the neighbors. The suburban world sprang back to life, like wildflowers invigorated by a hard rain and bright sun. The blacktop streets steamed, the water drained into the culverts, and first one screen door slapped open and then another, and then there was a sharp crack, hot as a pistol shot, the sound of a bat on a ball. Children playing in the yard.

A dog barked. It would be a small dog, one of the spaniel breeds, maybe, the kind that yipped. Bred for retrieving birds, then turned into pets by people who didn’t hunt. Happy kids with happy pets in a happy neighborhood. The whole damn scene, silenced by the storm, was coming alive again.

Dalhover didn’t like it.

“We gotta move,” he said, and when Nickel opened his eyes again, he saw that Dalhover was standing near those marbled windows that flanked the door, eyeing the street.

“Not in daylight,” Brady said.

“Hell, that’s risky.”

“It’s smart. Give Nickel time to shake this off, and those kids will clear out of the street and go home to dinner. Nobody knows a neighborhood like the kids; they’re the ones paying attention to strange cars.”

Smart. Kids were more alert to the world around them than adults, more present, less distracted by old sins in the rearview mirror and fresh hopes down the highway. They just lived and listened and watched. Nickel could still tell you which boards creaked in his parents’ house and which steps on the staircase needed to be cleared with one long stride if you wanted to escape undetected. All these years later, all these real risks, and what he remembered best was how to sneak out of his childhood home and run downriver on a moonlit night to chase a girl.

Yes, Al Brady was on the right track. Wait until dusk, when the children were inside, and then go. They’d make it to the Kankakee yet.

It was Dalhover who had the bright idea that doomed them.

“The doc’s got a car. Where is it?” Dalhover studied the doctor.

“Garage,” the doc said shortly, and the hate was as clear in his voice as it was in his eyes. Nickel thought maybe they were underestimating the power of that hate. A smart man with a grudge was one hell of a nuisance. It might’ve been better if they’d tried to bribe him first, rather than showing the guns right away and ordering his wife around. Too late now.

“Get me the keys,” Dalhover said. “I’ll move his car out and put ours inside.”

“Someone sees a stranger moving cars around, they’ll be more interested in you than they are in the Studebaker that’s just sitting there,” the doctor said, handing him the keys.

“I ask for your advice?” Dalhover snapped, but Al Brady looked thoughtful, seeing both the advantage of having the Studebaker out of sight and the risk of being observed moving it by the neighbors.

“You did not,” the doctor said in a measured voice that suggested he was on the verge of making a diagnosis, “but I would rather you be safely away from my property before the police apprehend you. It’s in my interests to make your little band of criminals smarter than you can manage on your own. Let me move the car.”

Silence. Dalhover didn’t like it; Brady didn’t hate it, but neither man enjoyed being told what to do by anyone, let alone a hostage.

“You’re just brimming with good brains, Doc,” Brady said. “The shorter our time with you, the safer for you, that’s very good math. What are you, a Harvard man?”

“Michigan,” the doctor said, as if anyone really cared.

“Go Wolverines,” Al said cheerfully. “Let’s use your good idea, only I’ll tweak it just a bit.” He nodded at the doctor’s wife. “She can move the car. She’s smart enough not to try anything stupid, knowing she could get her husband killed.”

The doctor looked at his bag. There was a scalpel inside, maybe still wet with Nickel’s blood. His wife’s eyes were on him when she said, “Give me the keys. I’ll move the car into the garage.”

Dalhover gave her both sets of keys and Brady gave her the warnings: Don’t think about running or screaming, the doc will take the first bullet if you do, that kind of thing. She didn’t seem to have much patience for it, nodded in an abbreviated, let’s-get-on-with-it fashion. Nickel watched the doc watching her. The man trusted her judgment. They seemed to be communicating silently, a look that made Nickel think of Savannah Cody, the way she’d gaze at him right in front of her parents and he’d know she meant for him to come back after dark when her mother and father were asleep, and the hayloft was open to the stars.

Must be the pain, he thought. Memories like that at a time like this.

Marilyn Hanchell opened the door. Sunlight flooded in; the air smelled of damp soil and fresh grass, and the voices of the children were sharp, someone yelling he was safe, someone else insisting no, he was out and everybody knew it. Indignation all around, the way you could care about a baseball game when you didn’t know that three of the most-wanted criminals in the country were holed up with pistols next door.

Marilyn Hanchell walked out with her head high and her shoulders back, twirling the Studebaker keys in her hand as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Brady waited behind the door and Dalhover to the left of it, both with guns drawn.

“She’s gonna make a run for it,” Dalhover muttered, peering through a window.

“No, she’s not.”

Nickel turned his attention back to the doctor. There was a smugness to him that Nickel couldn’t quite fathom, given the situation. It was hard to concentrate, though, the pain was too strong, and although the bullet rested at the bottom of that ceramic basin, Nickel could swear he still heard it rolling, a tinkle as clear as the high end of a piano. He blinked, refocusing, as the Studebaker roared to life. The sound moved left to right, toward the garage. A pause, then a second engine chorused with the first. Nickel’s mind made sense of the sounds: She was in the garage now, backing the doctor’s car out, and she would replace it with the Studebaker.

“She’s taking too long,” Dalhover muttered.

“Give it a minute,” Brady said.

They all waited, silent.

“Damn it,” Dalhover said, “this is going on too long. She ran. There’s a back door to that place, and she—”

“Shut your mouth and use your eyes,” Brady snapped. “She’s figuring out how to get the garage door up.”

“It’s heavy,” the doctor said. “That’s why I should’ve gone.”

“Shut up.”

The new engine sound grew louder as it emerged from the garage, then died when she killed it in the driveway.

“Sweet Oldsmobile,” Brady said. “We might have to borrow that ride, Doc.”

What Nickel had figured.

A door opened, banged, another opened, banged, and the Studebaker’s motor muted and then cut off completely. She’d made the switch, closed the car in the garage, and all was well. Wait until dusk, then hit the highway. They’d tie the doc and his wife up, then take the doc’s car, get a head start. Nickel could see the getaway playing out clearly. As jinxed as the day had felt in Lima, things were working out well now.

But the doctor still looked smug.

Why was he so damn pleased with himself?

Before Nickel could say a word, though, the door opened. Marilyn Hanchell stepped back inside, gave Dalhover a sour look, and handed him both sets of keys.

“Happy?”

“What took you so long in the garage?”

“I changed your oil.”

Dalhover went to slap her but Brady caught his arm, and the woman looked satisfied with the whole scene. Yes, there was more than a little bit of Savannah Cody to her. Nickel would be glad when they left this house.

“Sit down on the dining chairs over there,” Brady told the doctor and his wife, then he dispatched Dalhover to search for rope. He came back with a handful of brassieres, laughing.

“I said rope,” Brady complained.

“Didn’t find any. These lovely lacy bits will do fine. Put your hands behind your back, Doc.”

The doctor recoiled, furious, and Dalhover grinned.

“Does she not usually let you get a look?”

That man will see us all the way to the electric chair, Nickel thought, watching the doctor, the hate on his face like heat shimmers on asphalt.

Brady waved the gun, and the doctor put his hands behind his back and sat rigid and silent while Dalhover tied his wrists with the underwear. The knots were awkward and wouldn’t hold long. Brady saw that, sighed, went to the phone, ripped the cord out, and tossed it to Dalhover. “Use that.”

Smart, Nickel thought—unless someone called expecting the phone to be answered and stopped by to see the doc in person when it wasn’t. That wouldn’t be good. He was just about to mention this possibility when a memory smacked him.

“There’s a phone in the garage,” he said.

They all looked at him. The woman’s cheeks flushed to match her hair, and Nickel knew he was right.

“What are you talking about?” Brady asked.

“I saw the wire,” Nickel said. “While I was in the car, waiting, I looked at the garage. There’s a whole apartment up above, and it’s got electricity and a phone line.”

Brady looked at the redhead. She gazed back, bold as a lioness, and no words needed to be said.

“I’ll fuckin’ kill you!” Dalhover roared.

“What help will that be?” Brady said, low and cool and thoughtful, and then he went to the window to look out at the street. His rage was an interesting beast—it would snarl awake at the silliest provocation, but in a moment of peril, he tamped it down. He could be as crazy as Dalhover, but Dalhover could never be as cunning as Brady. That was why the one followed the other, no doubt. Where did that put Nickel?

Taking bullets for them, he thought, and he sat up and swung his legs down so his feet touched the floor.

“What’re you doing?” Dalhover said.

“I’ll need to stand soon enough, if she called the police.”

They all looked at Marilyn Hanchell again. She didn’t even attempt to deny it.

“You should leave while you’ve got a chance,” the doctor said. “Take both cars and go.”

“You sure do love to dispense advice, Doc,” Brady said, eyes returning to the street. “Tell me, hon, did you call the police or a friend? Because I don’t hear sirens.”

Marilyn looked from him to her husband.

“You won’t hear sirens,” she said. “They promised they’d come quietly.”

There you had it. A brazen thing to confess, but she said it coolly. This was why the doc had looked smug. He knew the kind of broad he had. Smart and brave. You could be smart and brave and dead, though. Nickel wondered if the doc understood that.

“You’d be wise to give yourselves up,” the doctor said.

“You’d be wise to shut your fucking mouth,” Brady said, and Nickel thought that there might be shooting yet. Al Brady didn’t want to kill a woman, but he wasn’t going to be reluctant about shooting some cocky son-of-a-bitch doctor.

“How long has it been since she made that call?” Brady said.

Dalhover looked at his watch. “Six, seven minutes?”

“All right. So they’re out there already, somewhere close, but there won’t be many of them yet. More coming by the minute, though. Did you tell them we were waiting for dark?”

Marilyn Hanchell’s silence was confirmation.

“They’re making plans, and they think they have time to do it,” Brady said. “Nickel, can you walk?”

Nickel tested it. One step, then two. Flares of pain rose, but he stayed up. If he kept his weight lopsided on his good leg, he could get to the car—assuming a sniper didn’t drop him first.

“Think you can make it down the front steps?” Brady asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay. You just got to make it into the doc’s Oldsmobile. Jimmy’ll drive you. We’ll take the first three right turns, every one of them. They’ll have the streets blocked but these lawns are wide open, mostly. There’s room.”

“They’ll be shooting,” Dalhover said, but he didn’t seem particularly troubled.

“They sure will be.” Brady turned to Marilyn Hanchell. “I’m glad you’re so tall, babe. When I walk out of here with my arm around your waist, it’ll be damn hard to shoot past you.”

“Let her go,” the doc begged, and then Dalhover gagged him. Once he was silenced, Brady draped his arm around the redhead’s waist, holding her tight enough to hide the gun he was pressing to her ribs.

“Smile when we hit the door,” he said. “We’re good pals, remember?”

She didn’t answer. It was smart of Al to take her, but it also meant two cars and one hostage. The other car—the one with Dalhover and Nickel in it—was a much easier target.

Probably why they weren’t all going together.

Brady and the redhead walked smartly up the drive. She carried herself no differently than she had on the first walk, calm. Tough. They went into the garage through the side door. There was a pause, then the overhead door went up and the Studebaker’s engine started. Time for Nickel and Dalhover to follow.

“You ready?” Dalhover asked.

Nickel nodded, wiped sweat, tapped his gun.

Dalhover opened the door.

Dusk, the rain gone but the moisture still scenting the air, Nickel’s leg throbbing, each step creating a head-to-toe bolt of pain. But he was moving, and nobody took a shot at him when he went down the steps, opened the passenger door of Dr. Charles Hanchell’s Oldsmobile sedan, and fell into the seat. Dalhover walked around the hood, and when he turned and squared his chest up to the road, Nickel saw how tense he was, his face stricken. Then he was in the car, keys in hand, no bullets fired.

“Stupid bitch,” he whispered, starting the car. “Could’ve been easy. Now maybe she dies. Dumb. I should’ve popped her husband. Should’ve popped them both.”

Nickel didn’t answer. He laid his gun on his lap. The kids were still playing in the street. That was a hell of a problem for police. The cops couldn’t clear them out of the street in a hurry without blowing their own cover, and they wouldn’t want to exchange gunfire with children in the way. God bless baseball.

The Studebaker went first.

“Stick tight to them,” Nickel said. Brady had extra protection because of the woman, so they ought to drive kissing his bumper, just to give the police snipers pause. One wrong shot, one dead doctor’s wife. That kind of thing could upset taxpayers, maybe get a chief fired.

Dalhover followed the Studebaker out of the drive. Take the first three right turns, Brady had said—and use the lawns. Those nice, wide lawns.

Good news: No roadblock at the first right turn. Why? Because that’s where the kids were playing. Oh, how Nickel loved these kids. Five boys who scattered right and left when the cars came on, a couple of them lifting friendly hands, one smacking his fist into his leather mitt. Probably about the same age as Nickel’s own boy, Alford. He should live on a street like this. Then again, streets like this weren’t what they used to be, based on today’s events. You just never knew.

The first right turn fell behind them, and the first cop car came into view.

It was parked at the curb, not flashing lights but not hiding either. Nickel saw another one farther down the block. The second car started to reverse down the street, then stopped. The first car never moved. Nickel could see the wide white faces of the two officers in the front seat.

“Here we go,” Dalhover breathed, and he lowered his right hand to his gun. The machine gun was still in the Studebaker. Brady had the lone hostage and the firepower. Paid to be the boss.

The second right turn fell behind them, and no shots came. Nickel was stunned.

“We might’ve killed two cops in Ohio. They’re going to start shooting.”

“Not with the broad in Al’s car. He’s wild, and they know it. Who’s to say he won’t kill her?”

Nickel supposed he was right. It would be a hard choice for the police. You couldn’t risk losing a hostage. So then what? Go with the full pressure, probably. So many police cars that escape didn’t seem possible, a negotiator on a bullhorn, that kind of thing.

I wonder who her family is, Nickel thought. The husband was a doctor, and that mattered, but there was a father in the mix too. He pictured Wendell Cody in a room with police, knowing his daughter was in that car, and thought that the wrong father—or the right one, depending on your perspective—would make it a hell of a lot more challenging on the cops.

Behind them, a police car appeared, keeping its distance, lights and siren still off. Ahead, the street was open, a residential road, more big houses. It was dark enough now and there were enough trees bordering the intersections to make it hard to say whether police lurked down there, let alone how many of them. Brady had said to take the first three right turns, but surely he had been counting on some action by now, a chase, driving through the lawns as he’d described.

The Studebaker turned right. The roadblock waited.

Wooden barricades, three cars flanking them. The cops seemed caught off guard, one of them half in and half out of the car, another with his trunk open, probably retrieving a weapon, everyone scurrying around like they’d thought they had more time to get in position. Good thing Nickel had recalled the telephone wire to the garage apartment when he had.

Would’ve been a hell of a lot better, of course, if he’d recalled it before the redhead walked into the garage and made the call.

At the sight of the police, Al Brady broke his right-turn rule and went left, fast and hard, like a halfback hitting the hole. He drove straight up over the curb, across the sidewalk, and into the yard of a tall white colonial with a row of yellow tulips that offered little resistance to the Studebaker. A shot rang out, a single, small-caliber round, likely from a pistol, and someone shouted, “Hold your damn fire!” and then Dalhover was pursuing Brady, the Oldsmobile popping up and then down across the curb, jarring Nickel forward, flaring his pain.

The police didn’t have any intention of holding their fire on the second car. They let the Studebaker clear the yard, but when Dalhover hit the flower beds, the big guns opened up. Rifles, a pair of them, maybe three, crack, crack, crack, and then the Olds was slaloming sideways and the back wheels were digging but not pushing because the tires were shredded. Damn good sharpshooters, these Hoosiers.

Dalhover gave up as the back window blew out and glass showered them. He plowed the car into the bushes in front of the house, a decision that seemed foolish but maybe served a purpose, because the police didn’t seem to want to shoot in that direction, wing some housewife with a stray bullet. Things went quiet except for a woman’s scream from somewhere unknown. Dalhover fired a random wild shot over his shoulder, then grabbed the door handle and hollered, “Run!”

Run. That word, to a man who’d been shot in the leg. You’d have thought someone would remember. But Dalhover was gone, out of the Olds and scrambling across the yard, staying hunched, vanishing behind the porch.

Nickel didn’t try to run. What he did was, he cranked the window down and tossed his gun out, making sure it sailed wide and high, hard to miss. Then he put his hands in the air and waited.

Up ahead, the Studebaker was back on the street and scorching, the smell of smoked rubber joining the cordite from the gunfire, and still nobody was shooting at Al Brady. That was the advantage of the redhead in the passenger seat.

Should’ve all ridden together, Nickel thought, and then he didn’t have much time for further thinking, because the police were on him, and the long day was finally done.

14

ALFORD

IT WAS MY grandfather who told us they’d been caught.

We’d stopped at a diner just east of Indianapolis, a place with a big hand-painted hamburger sign that loomed over the highway. High winds had sheared off the top of the sign, which had likely contained the name of the establishment, and now the name was gone and the top half of the bun with it, leaving a hamburger overflowing with toppings but no bun.

“Looks messy,” my mother said, and I was—as so often with her—unsure if she was joking or truly obtuse. Mostly, she seemed to joke, but then again, she inevitably headed west when she intended to go east, so sarcasm couldn’t be taken at face value.

“Looks good,” I said, and she glanced at me, nodded as if a longer conversation had taken place, and pulled off the highway into the diner’s parking lot. She didn’t use the turn signal and scarcely used the brake, and there was a moment in which I saw the wide-eyed patrons in a booth on the other side of the glass watching in horror as the Lincoln rocketed toward them. Then the tires shrieked; I slammed forward, swung backward, and my mother parked, then cut the engine with a satisfied look.

“It is a fine car,” she said. “I can see why Dad is partial to this one.”

The mention of the vehicle’s owner seemed to remind her of the call she’d promised to make to let Grandfather Cody know of our whereabouts. There was a pay phone just outside the front door of the diner, unshielded from the blowing rain. My mother stared at it grimly before opening her purse. She applied fresh lipstick, checked herself in the mirror, then removed one dime, which she kept, and a dollar, which she held out to me.

“I’ll speak to your grandfather. While I do that, order me a hamburger and a coffee, and get yourself whatever you’d like. Add a milkshake or a piece of pie or something, Alford—you’ve earned it today.”

I didn’t want to go inside the strange place alone, and I was particularly discouraged by the glares from the couple in the booth, their expressions having shifted from fear to anger.

“I’ll wait,” I said.

“No, you won’t. You’ll do as you’re told.”

Her voice offered no room for negotiation. I took the dollar, got out of the car, and jogged through the rain to the front door. The place smelled of grease and onions, and the only unoccupied seats were at the lunch counter. A spectacularly fat man with a dour expression was tending both the griddle and the cash register. I offered a polite smile in the direction of the couple my mother had nearly killed, found no kindness in return, and sat on one of the stools. The fat man glared at me, but the dollar seemed to comfort him. I pushed it across the countertop before I ordered. Two burgers, one coffee, one lemonade. When I looked back at the parking lot, I saw my mother on the phone, gesticulating with her free hand, then holding up her palm as if to tell my grandfather to slow down, even though he couldn’t see her.

I hadn’t expected the conversation to go well and saw no reason why he should be understanding about the car theft, and yet I felt a strange desire to run out and defend her; at least I could tell him that I was safe and we were about to eat dinner and no one had been shot yet.

That was where I was wrong, of course.

The call went on for a while; my mother’s hand eventually fell to her side, and there was something in her face—a vulnerability, perhaps—that made me feel guilty for watching. It was a new expression for her, and it frightened me. Her brashness had vanished, which troubled me so much that I turned away. The burgers came fast—I had a feeling they always did here, that the fat man would be flipping meat in anticipation of the next patron until he closed the place for good.

“She needs an umbrella,” he growled as he slapped the plates down.

“What?”

“Your mother. Standing out there in the rain.”

“Oh.”

He returned his girth to the grill. It was by only the barest of margins that his gut remained above the sizzling surface. He glanced at me, as if feeling my analysis, and I hastily looked away and lifted the burger and took a bite. Only then did I think to wonder if my mother would find it rude of me not to wait for her. I looked outside and saw that her hair was now plastered to her neck and cheeks, the spring rain falling harder, driving against the big plate-glass windows, the rivulets blurring her so that I could no longer make out her expression. While I watched, she hung up the phone, shook her head, and walked into the diner, dripping wet. She looked even prettier, somehow, for having been drenched. If she was aware of the glares from the couple she’d nearly mowed down and the curious stares from other diners, she didn’t show it. She joined me at the counter, ran a hand through her wet hair, studied the plate, and said, “False advertising.”

“What?”

“The burger comes with a top and bottom bun. Looks delicious, though. Eat up, Alford. Your father’s been caught.”

She delivered the news as casually as if she were informing me that the rain was picking up. While I stared, she took a bite of her burger, gave an approving nod, and dabbed her mouth with a napkin.

“Are you joking?” I asked.

She looked at me with surprise. “There’s nothing funny about gunfire, Alford, no matter what you read in those comic books. It was apparently quite the scene, although I had some difficulty keeping your grandfather focused on that topic. You’d think that car of his had been a gift from the pope. Anyhow, yes, your father is in custody. The police beat me to the bastard, which is as surprising as it is disappointing.”

The fat man looked up from the grill, and conversation quieted around us, an eavesdropping pall falling on the diner like snow.

“He’s in jail?” I whispered.

“They might have taken him to a hospital first. Brady got away, can you believe that? Drove off with a doctor’s wife as a hostage.” She took another bite, chewed, dabbed her mouth. “Of course Al would have the hostage. Looking out for number one and all that. Your father and Dalhover were in another car. I’m not clear on who was driving—Dad either didn’t know or didn’t care to tell me, given the mood he’s in; he has the nerve to worry over things like clutches and transmissions on a day like this—but at any rate, the police got both Dalhover and your father. I can’t believe it. I’ll be damned if some doctor’s wife gets the reward simply because she was taken hostage. I sympathize, don’t misunderstand me, but her role in their capture was hardly an active one.”

The fat cook was staring at her openly now, and the only sounds were the sizzle of the grill and the rain on the windows. Everyone was listening.

“Lady,” the cook said, “are you talking about the Brady Gang?”

“That’s right. Have you heard anything?” she asked, conversational, the way one might inquire about the score of a baseball game.

“Of course I’ve heard about it! Been the only thing on the radio all day!”

“I don’t hear a radio now.” She looked around.

“I turned it off so decent people could enjoy their dinners without talk of murder!”

“That’s reasonable.” Another bite of her hamburger disappeared. I tried to chew mine, but the meat seemed to cling to my tongue, thick and tasteless, and the smell of the onions was suddenly nauseating.

“Are you having me on?” the cook said. The burgers on the grill were burning, but if he noticed, he didn’t care. All his attention was on my mother.

“Having you on? I wasn’t even speaking to you, sir. The conversation was with my son, although you apparently decided to include yourself.”

“You were talking to that boy as if his father was Nickel Terhune!”

“That’s because his father is Eddie Terhune.”

I wasn’t sure who was more shocked by this calm confession, the cook or me.

“They killed a police officer,” the cook said. The white smoke over the grill was laced with black now. “My brother is a police officer in Johnson County.”

“I’m grateful for him,” my mother said, bland as could be.

The cook pointed the spatula at her like it was a pistol. She smiled.

“Let me guess: You’d appreciate it if we’d go on our way now.”

“You’re right about that! I’ll be damned if I let any family of the cop-killer Nickel Terhune sit at my counter!”

My mother’s smile brightened, and her still-damp cheeks seemed to enhance the glow. “They already have. And you’ll soon be boasting about that.”

“Get out!” he raged, and I thought he might throw the spatula, but the grill flared with a burst of real flame, drawing his attention back to it.

“Bring your hamburger, Alford,” my mother said, taking one last bite of her burger and then sliding off her stool. “The food is better than the service, and I know you’re hungry.”

I had zero interest in the hamburger, but I dutifully grabbed it and slunk past the shocked patrons. My mother held the diner door open for me, and I ran through the downpour to the car, seeing her reflection in the windshield as she gave all the onlookers a cheerful wave, like a beloved niece leaving a family Christmas. The rain had turned to a torrent, and the top of the bun soaked in my fingers and slid to the pavement, but still I held on to the burger as I fell into the passenger seat. She joined me a moment later, started the engine, clicked on the headlights, shifted into drive, and turned her head to peer behind us.

She took her foot off the brake and the Lincoln lurched forward. “Look out!” I yelped as the horrified occupants of the booth scrambled up and away.

“Oops!” Her laugh, bright as a church bell, filled the car, and she slammed on the brake, bringing us to a stop an inch before the bumper met the plate-glass window. She shifted from drive into reverse, backed out, and turned onto the highway. This time, she managed to find east on her own, although it was plainly an arbitrary decision.

“Where are we going now?” I asked as the dark road rolled out before us.

“I’d like to say a hotel, because I’m tired of driving, but your grandfather was positively irate and wants his car back. You’d think he didn’t want me to get that reward—and this from a man who never ceases to talk about wasted wages! His priorities are fickle. Nevertheless, it’s been a long day, and I’ll need some planning time for our next step, so we’ll head back to the farm.”

I had never heard a sweeter sentence. Or at least that last clause was sweet. The rest…

“Our next step?” I echoed.

“The reward is lost; the potential is not.”

I had not the faintest idea what that meant, and my silence showed it, because she looked at me and spoke in a confiding tone.

“There are more ways to make money off Eddie Terhune than a simple reward. It might’ve been the easiest path, but it is certainly not the only one and I suspect not even the most lucrative. Keep the faith, Alford.”

We were perhaps four hours north of the farm. If I could survive until we got there, I could hide in the attic for as long as it took. She would drift away again, as she always had, and then I could emerge, and life with my grandfather would resume. Normalcy was not unattainable. It was simply impossible to imagine when I was in my mother’s presence.

She glanced at me again, then broke into a giddy laugh. “You’ve done it for him!”

“What?” I stared at her, perplexed.

“The sandwich, Alford. You’ve honored the bastard’s billboard.”

I looked down at the remains of the burger clenched in my hand and saw what she meant: Only the bottom bun and the burger remained, the top having gone the way of the rain and wind.

“Don’t waste it,” she instructed, so I ate the burger. Although the meat was cold and damp, I forced my way through it while trapped in the passenger seat of a Lincoln-Zephyr that shot like a bullet through the storm. It tasted terrible, and yet in years to come I would—and still do today—occasionally fix a burger in just such a fashion, think back on my mother, and smile.

Sometimes you get what you ordered. Sometimes you get cold meat and half a bun after you’ve been insulted and threatened. But you never let the bastards make you waste the sandwich.

15

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: When did Nickel become a full-time partner of Dalhover and Brady?

I’ll make you give up that name before this is over, I promise. Eddie began to ride with those two consistently in January of 1936. This was after Brady had dropped Clarence Lee because of his habit of shooting his mouth off when he drank too much. You don’t need to ask the next question—yes, I was aware that they were committing robberies. And, no, I was never a part of one. Except for—well, we’ll get to that, won’t we?

They started with grocery stores, mostly. Simple stick-up jobs with pistols. Eddie wanted to get back into the car business. He was comfortable with that. The others could steal the cars, and Eddie would strip them down and sell the parts. The same pattern that led him to Michigan City, of course. But he was broke, and what was he supposed to do? The problem by then was that Al Brady was obsessed with Dillinger. Johnnie meant more to that man than you can fathom. He was like a hero to Al.

I’d met Johnnie and liked him fine, but I was never impressed with the men around him. You could tell it was a hard crowd. I don’t believe Johnnie started out mean. He became something different, the same way Eddie did, and I suspect a lot of it began in the same place: that awful prison. For Al Brady, though, Johnnie was like a rabbit he had to chase. The goal wasn’t to do exactly what he did—although it amounted to the same thing—it was to be as well known. The press loved Dillinger stories, of course. So did women.

Toland: Were you ever at Little Bohemia or any of the other hideouts the Dillinger gang used?

No, although I certainly wish I’d been there the day your friend Melvin Purvis and the others showed up and made such an awful mess. It seems impossible. You caught them on a dead-end drive, backed up against a Northwoods lake, got out all those machine guns, and didn’t manage to kill anyone but an innocent cook. You did more than Dillinger to turn him into a folk hero. Of course, that changed when they began to kill policemen. Eddie understood that; Al Brady and James Dalhover never did.

Toland: So you were aware of the robberies from the start of 1936?

I was aware of the money. As for the source, well, I’m not an obtuse woman. Did I ask questions? No. Did I report them? No. Should I have done both? With distance and considering my current circumstances, I believe that I should have. It won’t matter to you—maybe not to anyone—that back then, no one had been hurt.

The money started coming in, and the places we were going, they were so different. Beautiful swanky hotels. Fine clothes and fine meals. I remember a few weeks in New Orleans that were perfect. After so many years of scraping to cover rent in an apartment that a rat would scorn, I won’t lie and tell you that I didn’t enjoy the hotels. Have you ever made love on silk sheets, Agent Toland? Look at that, you’re as red as a sunset. Sex on silk is a special experience, I assure you. There’s a softness, sure, but it’s more in the glide where the magic comes, and that wonderful cool when it’s done and the heat is fading.

There are literal beads of sweat on your forehead. My goodness. You’re the kind of man my mother might’ve approved of. You’re just repressed enough.

Toland: Speaking of your mother, what was your contact with family in this stretch?

You would latch onto that. The contact was minimal. It was also painful. I had no relationship with my mother, but Dad and I traded letters. I was more like his secret than his daughter. Would you believe he had to get a post office box just to correspond with me? When I sent a letter to the house, she got to it first and burned it. I’m sure she read it, but she burned it before he had a chance to.

The worst of that was with my son. I had no way of communicating with Alford. She didn’t allow it. There were a few short visits—holidays, his birthday, things like that. But I could see that my visits made him miserable. The tension in that house when I walked through the door was terrible, so I can only imagine the lead-up and the aftermath. And he was old enough by then to have questions that… well, I suppose I could have answered more of them.

I didn’t enjoy it, though. Not the visits, not the questions, none of it. In my mind, I was going to come back with Eddie and take Alford and leave. We just needed to get a few things in order first.

You know how that went.

Toland: Was your father aware that you were back with Terhune?

Terhune. You say it like you’re spitting rather than speaking, but it’s better than you calling him Nickel, thank you. Dad knew I was with Eddie, yes. He didn’t ask questions about the others. I’m sure he heard rumors. Those boys were all from generally the same area or at least were known in it, so I imagine it was hard on Dad, being aware of the whispers. Mostly, Dad and I talked about the world. Politics, the news, books. We traded recommendations on what to read. He had his tastes and I had mine but we always tried each other’s recommendations. He’d chastise me a bit, certainly, but always in a gentle way. More encouragement than judgment. I don’t know if a man like you can follow that idea. My father wanted me to find my way back to the righteous path on my own. He knew he couldn’t bully me onto it.

Toland: Would he have continued communicating with you if he’d known Nickel was involved in the robberies?

Right back to Nickel you go. I’m not surprised. Yes, my father would have kept communicating with me no matter what. He’s steadfast. I’ll see him later today. That’s the kind of man he is. He’d rather walk his daughter down the aisle than to the gallows, I’m sure, but he’ll never deny that she is his.

16

ALFORD

I FELL ASLEEP in my bedroom listening to my grandfather and my mother “clear the air,” as my grandfather put it. His voice was loud enough that he might truly have done that, vibrating dust into the air and then blowing it out the door in one of his frequent, stomping exits to the front porch, where he heated a cigar while cooling his temper. I was too exhausted to pay much attention, and I’d never been more grateful to be in my bedroom. The walls were papered with Wanted posters I’d salvaged from wastebaskets at the post office. My grandmother had hated that habit, but Grandfather Cody defended me, telling her it was his own fault for interesting me in detective tales at a young age.

He was half right. I did love detective stories, but I also had a fascination with staring into the cold glares or mocking eyes of the mug shots and wondering how on earth my father had come to be such a man and whether it was a quality you might be born with, something in the blood that dictated a life of crime.

The obvious question followed: Was it in me, waiting?

I never hung my father’s picture on the wall, although I’d found a few copies at the post office when they replaced his poster with an updated version. I did keep them, though, and while my mother and grandfather battled in the kitchen below, I unfolded them and studied his face. Wanted no more: He had been caught.

And shot.

Such a strange thing, to know this and yet not know him at all. I wondered what lay ahead for him. Twenty years or maybe the rest of his life in prison? The electric chair? I looked into his eyes in the grainy photograph above an inmate number from his Michigan City booking and thought of the way the fat man at the diner had stared at me, repulsed, as if my father’s deeds traveled within me.

Strangely, that had been almost a first. You would have thought that growing up in the shadow of a known felon would have been a problem from the start, but the truth was, it had never troubled me as much as it should have. Everyone knew he’d never been present. Even when I was at school, the taunting was minimal. I’d had a handful of fistfights defending my own honor but none defending his. I never attempted to; what was the point? My grandparents lived a rural and isolated existence, and I embraced that. In the summers, I was friendless but not unhappy. Maybe, I thought, studying that Wanted poster and remembering the fat man, I was isolated in part because my grandparents were trying to protect me from my father’s reputation.

Reputation was a paramount concern in my family. My grandparents’ farm had been purchased with funds provided by a man who’d been dead long before I was born, and we were supposed to honor his legacy in all ways. Jacob Winter was a minister turned general in the Civil War, where he achieved great notoriety as both a battlefield tactician and an eccentric: He refused to allow anyone of any rank to address him as anything but “Reverend Winter” and frequently paused for prayer in the heat of battle, speaking aloud but with his eyes closed, even as cannon fire boomed and bullets felled men around him. They were long-winded prayers for any moment, let alone in the midst of an active battle, but he never lost a fight. After the war, he returned to Indiana, where he struck up a friendship with another Hoosier general, Lew Wallace, who was then living on a houseboat and endeavoring to write a novel called Ben-Hur. The epic, subtitled A Tale of the Christ, became the bestselling American novel of the century. On the list of American novels, behind Ben-Hur and Uncle Tom’s Cabin in popularity but well ahead of most published works, was Lamentations of the Shenandoah, the one and only novel written by the Reverend Jacob Winter, a retelling of the Civil War heavily tinged with prophecy. The royalties from the old book were substantial enough to preserve the reverend’s granddaughter through the Depression and turn my grandfather into a retired railroad detective and gentleman farmer in an age when most farms were failing.

I’d tried to read Lamentations of the Shenandoah at my grandmother’s urging many times but never made it through, always setting the tome aside in favor of a story of a boy’s adventures or maybe Sherlock Holmes or my grandfather’s favorite, Zane Grey.

“It’s worth reading,” Grandfather Cody observed of the book that paid our bills, “but it is an uphill climb.”

I agreed with him, always losing the narrative somewhere around the First Battle of Winchester, when one of the novel’s sixteen narrators saw a thicket of brush smoldering after a cannonball strike and took to a meditation on Moses that went on for nearly twenty pages, at which point he returned to the action and observed that the fire in the thicket was out, the smoke had cleared, and the battle was concluded. How so much action could be skipped baffled me, but the book meant a great deal to my grandmother.

“The boy will get to it in time,” Grandfather Cody would assure her. “It’s not a book for rushing through. The author certainly didn’t.”

And so I was always allowed to move away from it to other things. I knew the first line by heart, though: “Show me a man without doubt and I shall show you a corpse.”

For a book so heavy on the biblical and so light on the battles, it was a promising start. Then it was revealed that the first guns hadn’t even fired on Fort Sumter, our narrator was unpacking his things at a seminary in New Hampshire, and the plot bogged down swiftly. Nevertheless, I understood that the book and its writer were revered by my grandmother. When she died, the homestead changed in ways I couldn’t fully understand. He hadn’t let the place go to pieces, but he hadn’t found a way forward either. The house was untouched, right down to the reading glasses on my grandmother’s Bible on the nightstand. Her sewing table in the parlor was still arrayed as if she might return to finish hemming the long navy skirt spread across it, and the slippers she wore in the evenings—she called them “house shoes”—rested on a rag rug.

She’d died in the parlor, I assumed, though it might’ve happened in the ambulance or even the hospital. I’d been fishing for bluegill in the mill pond when she rose from the sewing table, announced she had a headache, and fell to her knees. I arrived at the front door holding a stringer of fish just as the ambulance turned into the long drive. I will never forgive myself for hoping—urgently and fervently—that it was coming for her and not my grandfather. It was an awful wish, but I was twelve years old and couldn’t help it. She was a good woman but a stern one, and the thunderheads of disapproval she held for my mother—and by extension my own existence—never cleared from our skies. My grandfather was the closest friend I had, the one I couldn’t bear to lose, and when the ambulance made the turn, its colored lights painting the wheat fields, there were only two possible patients ahead.

Still, I hated myself for the wish, maybe even more because it came true.

The weeks that followed had passed in a dizzying blur for me in Huntington, but for my grandfather, there had been only the farmhouse and the absence of his wife, a woman he’d met when he was seven years old. My mother’s return brought him fresh frustrations, yes, but she also provided him with a gaze on the future and not the past.

The morning after we stole Grandfather Cody’s Lincoln, you’d have thought nothing had happened at all. My mother cooked breakfast for all of us. My grandfather, looking haggard, read the newspaper and sipped his coffee. I washed my breakfast dishes and headed for the barn, prepared for a morning of painting the new rail fence that Swede Larson and my grandfather had installed. The painting was my task, and I was proud to do it.

“Alford,” my grandfather said, “don’t worry about the paint today. You must be worn out from a few hundred miles of foolishness. Take the morning off and go fishing.”

“I don’t mind painting.”

“Go fishing,” he said.

My mother smiled at me. “Dad wants to come to a few understandings with me. If you’re painting too close to the house, he’s afraid you might hear them, and then we’d all understand.”

“Savannah,” he said in a warning voice. “The boy doesn’t need to be here.”

“He’s my son—I have no secrets from him.”

“Go on and tell him what you’ve really been keeping in that typewriter case, then.”

My mother went rigid. It was the first time I’d seen him land a verbal punch on her; she could ordinarily shake off even his most personal jabs.

“You’ve been going through my things?”

“I didn’t have to. You were still asleep with the damned door open when I looked in this morning.”

Now she seemed confused as well as angry. “Looked in my typewriter case?”

“Looked in the room, is all. But I sure do like the set of roller skates sitting on the closet floor. That’s how serious a lady you are, packing roller skates like a damned child.”

Her shoulders seemed to ease, but her eyes remained frosted. “And you consider yourself a detective.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Do you know Al Brady’s favorite pastime? He loves roller-skating. He travels with a custom pair. I suspect even the FBI knows that by now. But maybe not.”

It seems laughable now, the idea of public enemy number one on roller skates, but back then it was not. The roller rinks of the 1930s were often viewed as rowdy establishments, with many—including my grandmother—convinced that they contributed to the growing immorality of the world, as far from child’s play as one could get. During Prohibition, rinks were known for overlapping with speakeasies, and after Prohibition, they took over a dance-hall culture that was being left to the past.

“This was your big idea,” my grandfather said wearily. “To chase gangsters around roller-skating rinks. I swear, even low expectations can be set too high.” He paused, registered me as if he’d forgotten my existence, and pointed at the door. “Go.”

I went.

I’d rather have painted the fence—I liked work, particularly the task of cleaning up after the flood, setting right the damage. I liked fixing things. I had been taught that you needed to earn your evenings of pleasure, and now Grandfather Cody was so distracted that I was being treated like a child rather than a man.

At least he’d sent me to the mill pond. It was my favorite place on earth, an oasis set in the valley below the house, the old mill wheel long gone but the stacked-stone foundation pylons remaining, offering a fine vantage point across the property and clear diving in the summer. The water was cool and deep and filled with bluegill, perch, and some small bass. A grand place in the evening if you knew what the next day held. I did not.

What now? Those two words seemed to come from every birdsong and wind gust. My future was unknowable. Would my mother leave; would I go with her; would I stay at the farm? What should I want? When we were away, it seemed easy to desire a return to the farm, and yet… I liked her. I was afraid of her, yes, and I knew that I was safer here, but I liked the woman.

What now? What now? I picked up a broken fragment of the old mill foundation and whipped it at a calling blue jay as if the bird’s song had truly been the taunting question. While I was frightening off the innocent jay, I missed a fish bite, then brought in an empty hook.

“Attention is the only thing any man can ever truly command.” That came from Lamentations of the Shenandoah. My grandmother had been fond of that line, and it was one of the few offerings of Jacob Winter that my grandfather enjoyed as well.

“The Reverend General might’ve missed the forest for the proverbs a bit too much, but he was right about that,” he would say.

It was indeed a hard line to argue with, at least when you have just missed a fish because you were distracted.

The sun rose higher, and the moisture from the previous day’s rains burned off in the fields, creating a low mist that looked like a secret lake, the wheat weaving like seaweed in its depths.

The fish were showing as little interest in my bait as I was showing in catching them when I heard footsteps in the grass behind me and turned to see my mother. I rose, expecting to have to climb down from the precarious stone pylon to meet her, but she was already on her way up, moving with ease and surprising speed. I’d never seen an adult woman climb the foundation of the old mill, and I was impressed by it at the time, although I realize now that she would’ve been only twenty-nine years old when she displayed that feat of athleticism. She was an adult, that was all I knew, and no adult had ever joined me here on my high perch.

“It’s a fine spot, isn’t it?” she said. She sat down with a sigh and a smile and looked out across the farm. There was a touch of melancholy in her eyes despite the smile, and I had the sense that she was remembering the farm from years earlier.

“Was the mill wheel here when you were a kid?” I asked.

“No. It was gone even in those ancient days. But if your grandmother wasn’t looking, Dad would let me fish up here, and if neither of them was looking, I’d take advantage of the diving platform.”

It was a daunting leap, one that I hadn’t grown confident enough to try until my tenth summer, so I was even more impressed.

She looked at me thoughtfully, as if considering whether she should disclose this next bit, and then said, “Your father loved it too.”

I was unsure how to respond. I didn’t want to admit that I was curious about him.

“There’s a big flat stone here”—she stretched past me and tapped a wide slab of granite with her fingers—“that is so hard you can chalk it with a softer rock. Like this.”

She found a fragment of white limestone and etched a heart on the granite. I looked away, afraid we were about to enter hayloft-tale territory.

“Anyway, we’d leave notes,” she said, and then, as if sensing my unease, she flung the limestone into the pond, where it landed with a satisfying thunk and sank, ripples in its wake. We were silent until they faded as if following some unwritten rule of pond etiquette.

“Want to know a game your grandmother taught me?” she said.

This caught my interest. My grandmother was not a game player. She certainly never taught me any.

“It came from the Reverend General himself,” my mother said, reading my face, “so don’t worry, there’s a moral involved.”

I allowed a smile at this. She hunted across the foundation until she found a small flat piece of slate that she could pry up, then picked up another limestone fragment for chalking.

“You write down something you want to be rid of,” she said, sketching on the rock, whitening its gunmetal-gray face, “and you toss it out there in the deep and watch it sink, and then whatever it is will be gone. Count the seconds until there are no more ripples and the surface is still again, and that’s how many days until the thing comes back to you. Remember to do it again before that day, and you can keep whatever it is at bay. Casting stone and sin, Alford—you understand.”

I didn’t exactly, but the idea was easy enough to grasp.

“Your grandmother would write down something like temptation and then hand it to me to toss,” she said, a wistful note in her voice that contradicted the slight, devilish curl of her lips. “But I’d play my own version. I’d write down, say, the name of a mean boy from school and then…”

She whipped the rock, and after a long pause we heard the splash and saw the ripples. She had quite an arm. I would’ve needed to stand for proper leverage to hope to match the distance.

“Your grandmother caught me at that once and said I was playing with witchcraft.” She laughed. “All I know is the mean boys never disappeared, but it was satisfying to toss them out there. Why, there’s probably a whole stack of the bastards down there.”

Her casual profanity never failed to shock me, because swearing was forbidden on the farm, although Grandfather Cody was known to forget the rule when he caught a splinter from the fence or banged his shin on a steel hitch.

My mother found two flat pieces of slate and two small chunks of limestone to chalk on them with. She gave me one of each and bent to her own stone, her lower lip pinched between her teeth, her hand hovering, as if she were truly puzzling over the task. Then she began to write. I saw only the double curve of an opening s before she turned her body slightly, blocking my view.

I looked at the piece of slate in my own hand and thought about it. What troubled me most? Why, it was all I had been thinking of down here: uncertainty about the future, the unknown path ahead. What was the right word for that? A short word, one that wouldn’t take much effort to etch into the stone.

Doubt—that was it.

I chalked my word onto the slate, then looked over at my mother. She was smiling, her own rock finished. Her palm obscured whatever letters had followed that s.

“Are you ready, Alford? Throw your troubles away and watch them sink.”

I stood, not wanting to be embarrassed by having a toss that she could surpass from a seated position, and gave my best center fielder’s windup, thinking of Tris Speaker, the great Cleveland outfielder with the finest arm in the game. Then I flung my doubt into the pond.

The rock glittered in the sunlight, arced over the water, and splashed down. I was so pleased with the heave that I forgot the rules of the game until my mother began to count aloud. We reached twenty-seven before the last of the ripples vanished and the pond was still again.

“There you go, nearly a month without whatever it was you tossed out there. A relief, isn’t it?”

“Sure.”

Silly as the whole thing was, there was something about the exercise that felt pleasant. Not real, of course; I didn’t believe anything had been accomplished, yet the visual of the doubt rock sinking into the depths was satisfying.

“Did you write mother?” she asked softly.

“What? No!”

She gave me a tight smile that suggested she didn’t believe me. I was genuinely shocked, and there was no way to convince her she was wrong, since I was unable to produce the rock with the word.

“I wouldn’t blame you, and neither would anyone else in this county,” she said.

“I didn’t, though! I wrote—”

“Shhh!” She cut me off dramatically, raising a finger to her lips. “It only works if the wish is kept secret, Alford, you must know that.”

“Go on and throw yours, then.”

She stood, and the way she held the rock and narrowed her eyes told me she remembered exactly where my rock had fallen and intended to surpass the distance. Then she glanced at me, saw my face, and grinned.

“My burdens are heavier than yours.” She made a show of carrying the small stone to the edge of the foundation in both hands, walking with bent legs and a stooped back as if toting a cinder block. Her physical comedy was so good I couldn’t help but laugh aloud. She dropped the flat stone off the edge of the pylon with a mighty grunt, as if she’d tipped over a piano, and it plunked into the shallow water only a few inches away while she stood with her hands on her knees, pretending to gasp at the great exertion of it all.

“There we go,” she said, straightening and placing a hand on the small of her back while wiping her brow. “I bought myself maybe a day.”

“What did you write?”

She shook her head and lifted her finger to her lips again. Ah, yes: secrets.

“If you did write mother—” she began.

“I didn’t!”

“If you did, I have good news: You’re going to be rid of me for a while.”

“Did he throw you off the farm?” I whispered.

“Dad? No. Well, yes, a few times, I suppose, but he never really means it.” She waved a dismissive hand. “I have some business to attend to, that’s all, and I intend to return with evidence that I am a more serious person than he gives me credit for.”

When I was silent, she shot me a hard look, as if waiting for support.

“Sure you will.” It was the best I could manage. “May I… do I get to… I mean, should I stay here?”

“I think it’s best, yes. I won’t be long. A few days, maybe a week.”

As if this mattered. She came and went; the only change in the pattern had been after my grandmother died. We’d made it less than a month together and now she was leaving again.

“Will you miss me?” she asked, the same thing she always asked upon departure.

“Of course,” I said, my own dialogue well rehearsed by now. There was something different about the line this time, though. After our strange day together on the road, the idea of missing her felt more real.

She gave a sad smile, bent at the waist, kissed me on the top of the head, and said, “I’m going to figure it out this time, Alford.”

“I know you will.”

She looked from me to the pond’s surface, staring at the spot just past the ledge where she’d dropped her rock.

“You’re a good boy with a strong arm,” she said. “Keep heaving your troubles away, all right?”

With that, she scrambled back down the foundation pylon, moving faster than half the boys in my school could’ve managed, and set off up the path to the farmhouse. I watched her go, wondering what word she’d written that had started with an s.

I had the sudden, painful certainty that it had been son.

I hadn’t wished her away. She just chose to go. I had wished doubt away, and that seemed noble enough. Who wouldn’t want to be rid of doubt?

It was only later that day, long after my grandfather had driven her to the train station, that I remembered the Reverend General’s opening line from Lamentations of the Shenandoah: “Show me a man without doubt and I shall show you a corpse.”

I’d made a poor choice despite good intentions.

That afternoon, forbidden to use the radio by my grandfather, who wanted to keep me from hearing any news reports, I returned to the mill pond and looked out across its surface, wondering where my doubt rock had gone, wishing that I could collect it and write something better. Of course I couldn’t find it—but I could find my mother’s, which rested in the shallows at the base of the old foundation. I wanted to know if I was right about my suspicion, if she had written son before sinking her burdens and heading for the road once more.

It took nearly an hour of searching through cold water and weeds before I found the rock, held it up to the sunlight, and read the troublesome word that began with an s.

She’d written her own name.

17

NICKEL

IT DIDN’T TAKE Nickel long to wish he’d been shot twice.

The lone bullet removed by the hostage doctor, Hanchell, was enough to buy him two nights in the hospital before they sent him to the jail, and those were not bad hours. The doc, for all his hatred of them, had evidently done fine work on the wound, and Nickel didn’t have any life-threatening complications that could keep him in the nice bed with the starched white sheets and the pretty nurses, one of whom clearly enjoyed her brush with notoriety because she came in more than the others and looked at him with fantasy rather than fear. They kept him handcuffed to the bedrail, sure, but the chain was light and long, nothing too troublesome, and he slept as well in those two nights as he had in a month. Bedrest was underrated, he believed, but his body betrayed him by flushing out the fever and obliterating any infection, and then it was off to the county lockup: a cell, a cot with a shit-stained mattress pad, and mean bulls who pushed the memory of the nurse to the horizon and made Nickel wish he’d taken a couple more bullets to extend his hospital stay.

Still, it wasn’t as bad as Michigan City.

That was coming, though. That was surely coming—that or worse, according to the prosecutors and detectives who visited him with their grim grins of triumph and promises of the electric chair if Nickel didn’t start giving up names in a hurry.

The only leverage he had was that Al Brady was still gone. The new federal agents, fresh-faced accountant-looking types, made it clear that J. Edgar Hoover’s hard-on was for public enemy number one, and that was not Nickel Terhune.

He told them he’d think on it, do his best to recollect some places where he thought Al might be holed up.

“I was never good with addresses,” he said, then he asked if he might talk to Dalhover, to which, of course, they said no, and then he asked for a lawyer, which produced a fat boy from Fishers, Indiana, who looked too young to have taken the bar exam. The lawyer’s advice? Give up Al Brady.

Some defense team.

They should have been in the Marion County jail, the way Nickel had it figured, but instead had ended up in Hancock County, a farm burg looking in at the city with envious eyes, as if promising to catch it soon enough. Probably would, Nickel thought; everything grew together in time until what had been city and what had been country was hard to discern. Just look at what Chicago had done to the Kankakee Marsh—all that timber gone, the winding river itself dredged into a damn canal, as if humanity’s goal was to erase natural magic. Hancock County’s jail was known for housing a famous inmate or two securely in recent years, and the FBI was keeping Nickel and Dalhover away from associates in Marion County cell blocks. They wanted Brady’s boys isolated so the boss couldn’t send them any messages.

Meanwhile, the local FBI team, led by an agent named Toland out of Chicago who clearly had an eye to being the next Melvin Purvis—the agent who’d parlayed Dillinger’s death into a radio show and a bunch of Hollywood parties—kept pushing Nickel to give up other “pieces of Al Brady’s network.”

Nickel almost felt bad telling them the truth: There wasn’t much to that network. Barrooms and pawnshops and pool halls and, Al’s personal favorite, roller-skating rinks. Knowing nods and introductions. Liquor and bad ideas. Some network. But Hoover thought he was on the edge of taking down a criminal enterprise like the Italian mob, not merely a couple of crackers who had more machine guns than common sense.

Al might stay missing for a while if this effort was any indication of the FBI’s prowess.

Nickel didn’t begrudge the man his freedom. It was tempting to resent him, considering the only reason they’d ended up in this place was Al Brady’s bruised ego, but Nickel could’ve walked away without getting in the car to Lima. There wasn’t some kind of code, a promise of loyalty, none of that shit. You went along or you didn’t. Problem was, if you didn’t go along, you were left behind, and alone. The highways and train yards were full of men who’d set out alone, and how were they living?

Nah, he couldn’t blame Al.

Evidently, Brady had let the redhead, Marilyn Hanchell, out of the car in the woods west of Terre Haute, right on the Illinois line. A farmer had woken to her pounding on the door in the night, and then the chase was on again, a bunch of police cars screaming up and down the highways across four or five states and scaring the hell out of innocent folks.

Nickel’s question was, had Al taken the machine gun? Nickel loved that machine gun and Brady couldn’t care for it properly. But Nickel’s lawyer said it wasn’t “relevant to the situation at hand,” even though running weapons across state lines was a federal crime and the presence of that weapon was evidence that could implicate Nickel directly. The fat boy didn’t seem to know his law books that well.

Not that Nickel had much of a case.

“Cooperation or corporal punishment—those are your options,” the fat boy said, looking almost pleased with the bargain, as if he were curious which way it would go but didn’t much care, like he was watching a ball game just because he had a free ticket.

“Hell,” Nickel said, “I am cooperating. You hear what I told them about the hotel in Milwaukee? Brady loves that place.”

“It burned down three years ago, Mr. Terhune, and I believe you’re well aware of that.”

“The Hotel Central? I’ll be darned. That was the best guess I had.”

The fat boy sighed and shrugged and left.

A week went by. The lawyer returned just once, said the trial was scheduled for late summer, likely the last week of August, and that the state would demand the death penalty unless Nickel cooperated on Al Brady’s capture. Nickel said he would if he could, his lawyer rolled his eyes and sighed like a teacher with a naughty student, and that was that. The electric chair loomed.

Three days later, Nickel was summoned to the meeting room for another visit. He wondered what the fat boy had for him this time. Maybe he’d brought a ruler to rap Nickel’s knuckles with, see if that got him to give up Al’s location. Nickel and Dalhover were housed on separate floors, and the guards had put Nickel all the way at the top, the third floor, then laughed at him as he’d limped up the stairs. The meeting room where the FBI and the Indiana State Police kept showing up to interrogate him about Al Brady was all the way down on the ground floor. He shambled down the steps in his cuffs, ankle chain jangling, and passed through what was called cell block A, a fancy name for a cluster of four cells occupied by the town drunks. The local boys hooted at him from the other side of the bars, one making a rat-a-tat-tat machine-gun sound. The guard took him downstairs, opened the door to a little windowless room, and there was Savannah Cody.

Nickel had been less surprised when the bullet hit him.

Look at her there—not yet thirty, a woman in full bloom and sure of it, although she’d always been sure of it, as confident in herself at sixteen as anyone Nickel had ever known. Raven-haired and ruby-lipped, the kind of woman a talented advertising artist would render to lure men into a jewelry store—hell, to lure them anywhere. She was slim and had little in the way of hips, more in the chest, and watching her sit with one leg crossed over the other, Nickel remembered those legs wrapped around his back, how they quivered in the final ecstasy.

She gazed at him across the empty limestone room and said, “You’re damn lucky to be in here, you know. I was on my way to kill you. I still would, but this is a bad spot for it.”

The bull who’d brought Nickel in chuckled, and Savannah nodded at him with a warm smile, thanking her audience.

“You got ten minutes with her, Terhune,” the bull said. “Don’t worry, we won’t let her kill you—the state wants to do that.”

The steel door banged open, then clanged shut, and Nickel was alone with her for the first time in nearly a year. They’d been in a church then—loading guns and hiding from police.

Savannah slid a stool toward him with one foot. “Sit down already, I don’t need to hear you clanging around like one of Charles Dickens’s ghosts.”

Only then did Nickel realize he was trembling a little, making the shackles rattle. He hadn’t been prepared to see her. The FBI or a prosecutor, sure, but not her.

“The hell are you thinking, coming here?” he said as he sat, dragging the chains over the rough stone floor, a sound that called to mind the meanest dog on his father’s porch, the one his mother insisted on keeping chained and the only one his father couldn’t bring himself to kill, likely because it was so mean, which was the single trait he admired in man or beast.

“I came to propose,” she said.

Nickel laughed.

Savannah didn’t.

She recrossed her legs, smoothed her skirt, and swung her foot in a slow, teasing dangle. Smoked. Watched him. Didn’t speak.

“Propose what, Savannah?” he said at last.

“Marriage, of course. Even by your standards, that is a dense question.”

“Get your story straight,” Nickel said. “Do you want to murder me or marry me?”

“The former was my preference, but you boys got yourselves arrested before I could make that happen. So now… now we’re to the marrying stage.”

Nickel stared. There was no one alive or dead, not James Dalhover or Al Brady or John Dillinger, who baffled him more than Savannah Cody. How many times had he asked her to marry him? A hundred was lowballing the total. He could never get her to yes. Now he sat in jail, a death sentence ahead of him, and she spoke of marriage as if it were reasonable.

“It’s prudent for your case,” she said. “A wife and a child are what you’ll need to sway the judge. It may be the difference between a cell and the electric chair. You’ve already got the child, but the wife helps. I think I’d be grand in the courtroom, don’t you?”

Somewhere in the hallowed halls of a great university or maybe in the laboratories of a fine psychiatric hospital, there might exist a man who could understand her.

“You’ll end up in a courtroom without my help,” Nickel said. “You don’t need to marry a gangster, Savannah. You are one.”

Her smile didn’t waver. “Eddie. Think of the life you’ve left me. Of the life you’ve left my son. We’re national figures, like it or not, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to be a figure of pity in the shadows. No. I intend to squeeze at least a nickel’s worth of—” She stopped, smiled brightly. “How about that? Unintended too! A nickel’s worth of usefulness for all the pain and shame.”

“What in the hell are you talking about?”

She ashed the cigarette onto the floor.

“Right now, the press thinks I’m nothing but a gangster’s toy, a silly girl who got knocked up by a bad man who left her behind.”

“I’m always surprised when they get it right.”

As soon as he said it, he wanted the words back. They’d hurt her, just a little, and he could never bear to hurt her. He was in love with her, always had been, and it wasn’t his damn fault that she had once loved him back.

“Due to current circumstances,” Savannah said, “there’s little for me to leverage with the media. Now, if I’d found you and killed you? Wow. That would’ve been something, wouldn’t it?”

Wistful, mourning the murder that she hadn’t been able to commit.

“Would’ve been something,” Nickel agreed. “But here we sit.”

“Alas, right? I’ve no choice but to make the best of it. I’ve lost the opportunity to kill you for dishonoring your son, so I’ve had to give some serious thought to the next best thing. I think that’s the marriage. Because there’s a story to it, at least. It’s not a natural role for me, I’ll be the first to admit that, but I think I can pull it off. Hopeless girl in a hayloft, her potential ruined by a gangster’s seed, and yet she loves him still.”

She frowned, shook her head, and took a long drag off her cigarette. “It will take some work. But I’ll get there. I can sell it.”

Nickel said, “You are out of your damned mind.”

Savannah smiled and leaned close; the neckline of her blouse fell away from her collarbone, giving him a glimpse of red lace and white flesh, enough to make a man in a cell go sleepless for a month.

“Eddie,” she said, voice low and languid, her middle-of-the-night, out-of-the-darkness tone, “have you ever seen an electric chair? It’s no way to go.”

She was crazy, but she wasn’t wrong.

18

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: During the years on the road with Brady and Dalhover and the others, you genuinely expect people to believe you weren’t engaged in criminal activity?

People can believe what they wish. All I can do is tell the truth. A point to which I keep returning: Why lie now, Agent? I’m a few hours from being fricasseed. Don’t like that term, do you? Executed, then; we’ll stick to the nice polite idea of execution, as if that’s fair for a woman who made a handful of mistakes but by and large simply stood by a good man in a troubled time. There are a million women like me around the country, all keeping silent about the sins of the men they love or the sons they raised. You won’t melt all of us in that chair in Michigan City. Hoover just wants one.

You know who I think it should be? Anna Sage, Dillinger’s Woman in Red, even though she was really wearing orange, but the media never cares to get the details right. The Woman in Red sounds better, I guess.

She was smart, but not loyal. I was loyal, so I suppose that means I’m stupid? I don’t know. My great-grandfather wrote a whole novel about the wages of sin, and the only parts my father could tolerate—although he never admitted this to my mother, mind you—were the passages about loyalty.

Anna Sage—her real name was Ana Cumpanas, I believe, and you could tell me but you don’t want to hear me go on about her—was running a Chicago brothel and she was perfectly content to take Dillinger’s money, but what she really wanted was American citizenship, and she saw the opportunity and offered to make a deal. Hoover accepted it. Right? You know he did. Off to the Biograph Theater they went, and an hour later, Johnnie was dead in the street, and Anna was given a reward, but it was only half of what she’d been promised, and the thing she cared about most, citizenship? Denied. They deported her even though they’d supposedly cut her a deal. Think about that. Power and leverage, Agent Toland, power and leverage.

No loyalty in that mix. Not from Hoover or the United States government, and certainly not from Anna. The real lady, the one I admire, was Billie Frechette. She was an Indian girl from Wisconsin, Dillinger’s one true love, and she was locked up when he was murdered—

Wait, excuse me, gunning someone down in the street doesn’t qualify as murder? Why, because the gun was in the hand of a federal agent? Killing is killing. An execution by the state is moral confusion, in my opinion, and I hope one of these reporters takes note of that. You’re so mad at Dillinger for killing someone that you kill him in cold blood and call it square.

Billie Frechette was loyal. She hid Johnnie when he needed hiding, and she went to jail for it, and so she was in a cell when he was killed. I don’t begrudge her a bit of the public attention she’s getting now. She deserves a little fame.

Toland: Is that what you were after, Miss Cody—fame?

Not directly. Al Brady wanted fame. I wanted respect.

Toland: Associating with gangsters and killers is an odd way to pursue respect. As is proposing to a prisoner in a jail cell and aiding and abetting his violent escape.

I only did half of that. I proposed. You all saw that as a conspiracy at worst or an attempt to grab fame at best, and I might’ve winked at the second option, but the truth is I still believed in Eddie. Now, I didn’t tell him that. I would’ve needed more time to assess him, see how much he’d changed. But it was absurd that he was considered to be on the same level as Brady and Dalhover when he hadn’t fired a killing shot. I’ll confess that I was watching Billie Frechette tour around with Dillinger’s family, making her dollars on that Crime Doesn’t Pay tour of public education—you just have to laugh at that one—and I thought I had a better story. I mean, at least I could write it. The public was hearing only your narrative of the whole scenario. There was a lot of truth missing in those press conferences, let me tell you.

Toland: I’ll note that Billie Frechette also drove a getaway car, much as you did following the murder of Officer Minneman.

I don’t know that I would call what I did “driving a getaway car,” as it implies that I was there at the time of the robbery before he was killed, and that’s not true.

Toland: At the time of the murder, though, you were present.

Well, I was hardly a participant. We’ll talk about that eventually, I’m sure. But you began this with a bit about how I must have been a participant in the robberies, a bona fide member of the villainous Brady Gang, and that’s absurd. I was Eddie’s girl, that’s all. They didn’t consult me on plans—their operations would’ve been much more successful and lucrative if they had—and they didn’t tell me what happened. I don’t care if you believe me or not when I say that at first I thought stolen cars were their primary source of income. That was the work Eddie did before Michigan City, and then of course he’d added the guns, because he was so gifted with all things mechanical. That was my understanding: He was working with cars and weapons. And maps. The man was always studying a new map. That’s why you’ll never catch him. He has more maps in his head than you have in FBI headquarters. You’ll never guess the right route to catch him. Last time you got him was when Al Brady made them go back to Lima, and that wasn’t Eddie’s idea. If he’d been at full strength for the getaway, you’d still be searching for him.

Then again, you’re still searching for him now, aren’t you? Blaming me for that.

Toland: You have a few hours left to live, Miss Cody. A deal could still be made. Mr. Hoover and the governor and even the president could engage in a reasonable discussion if you shared the whereabouts of Nickel Terhune. Will you do that?

That’s rich. I’ll get a deal like Anna Sage, right? Promises made, promises unkept. I’ll be deported to Romania like her or sent wherever you’d like to send me. Here’s the truth: I can’t tell you where Eddie is; all I can tell you is that you won’t find him. He’s too good with maps, Agent Toland, too natural with navigation. He smells freedom the way a good dog smells a bird in the bush long before a hunter can see it. All Eddie needed was to get away from those men—Brady, Dalhover, Clarence Lee, all of them—and keep searching for salvation. Now he’s done that.

The salvation of Savannah Cody is a lost cause, but the second act of Eddie Terhune is not. I rather enjoy the idea of you keeping those Wanted posters up year after year until they yellow and turn so brittle that the staples won’t hold them anymore. They’ll fall off the walls and be swept up in scraps, and by then there will be another public enemy number one to chase, and Eddie will still be out there, haunting your dreams.

I love knowing that.

Toland: You could preserve a relationship—a life—with your son if you cooperated. No interest?

You’re a cruel man. The only interest I have left in this life is my son. He came along late for me, or, rather, I did for him, but in that summer we spent on the road with my father searching for Eddie, we got to know each other. I’m so proud of that boy. He’ll be fine—despite me, he’ll be just fine. But I’m a romantic, Agent Toland. A dreamer. In the dream that I have, Alford and Eddie find each other, and you’ll still be looking in all the wrong places. They deserve that chance. A few moments alone in the what-could-have-been world.

Toland: We’ll find Nickel again. You know that. And this time, he won’t get away. He doesn’t have any friends left to shoot him out of a cell.

I’ll take that wager, though you’re going to have a hard time collecting from me after midnight, aren’t you? I’ve already said that you got him once through dumb luck, because he wasn’t driving, wasn’t at full capacity, and Al Brady had imagined a grudge. But you don’t know Eddie like I do. How he thinks, how he moves. Give him a fast car and an open road and he’ll stay out there, always.

You know, he was so graceful on roller skates. It was funny, because he was a terrible dancer, always off rhythm, awkward, jerking one knee this way and one elbow the other. But put him on wheels? Then it was magical. All the grace he couldn’t find through his own body seemed to flow up and into him from the wheels. He could do tricks that nobody else could think of, let alone execute. Al Brady fancied himself a skater, but he was nothing like Eddie. And when the two of us were together? That was a sight to behold. We read each other better the faster we went. It was kind of like making love.

Oh, watch you flush!

But it was like that. Start off slow, and that’s fine, that’s necessary, but if you find a partner who understands your body at speed, that’s a whole different experience. Eddie and me in the roller rink was like Eddie and me in the bedroom. Or on the highway, for that matter. The thing that united us was always speed. The faster the better. Go fast enough, and I was along for the ride, caught up in the emotion, the passion, the thrill. Eddie, though, he always saw the next turn, the spin, the twirl and kiss.

When he was on wheels, it was all I could do to keep up.

He’s got four wheels now, would be my guess, a V-8 engine and a vehicle with fine tires, and he knows that map. Wherever he is in this world, he’s learned the local map by now. He’ll be just fine, Agent. I hate to break it to you, but he’ll be just fine.

19

ALFORD

THE WEEKS WERE quiet after my mother left the farm. My grandfather and I were trying to ease back into a sense of things as they’d once been—impossible without my grandmother’s presence and made harder by the tornadic visitation that went by the name of Savannah Cody. My grandfather kept me out of school. Summer was near, he said, no point in rushing back.

“At this point, we’ll focus on fall,” he told me. “Between this and your time in Huntington, you’ll likely be unable to catch up to the class, and we can’t have a descendant of the author of Lamentations of the Shenandoah being behind in grammar. It’s a poor look.”

I pretended to go along with the joke and the reasoning, but his true concern was the cruelty of my classmates in response to the latest round of Nickel Terhune headlines. Anytime my father made the front page, Grandfather found a way to provide me with a week’s vacation under the guise of pressing tasks. He was well intentioned but misguided; even the bullies were bored with my legacy by now. I had friends in school, although not as many as I’d have liked, and what I feared more than bullying was pity. I suspected his hesitation to send me back to classes was also rooted in his uncertainty over whether I should continue to live on the farm with him or if he should find me a home with what he termed “a woman’s care.” What he meant was a mother’s care, and it was plain that he didn’t believe my real mother could provide it.

True to form, he invented a task that could serve as a replacement for the daily discipline of school. The fence that had been devastated in the January floods was expanded, and I was in charge of painting it, like Tom Sawyer, only we were too isolated for me to find any unsuspecting recruits who might be persuaded that the job was a privilege and who would happily do it while I supervised. It was hard work—and pointless. There was no need for a boundary at all in this part of the field, certainly not one of painted pickets where barbed wire would suffice. If the neighbors needed a visual to get a sense of how lost Wendell Cody was without his wife, they were afforded one: an endless fence to nowhere.

He set the posts, I painted them, and our clean white line extended like a battalion on the march. Considering what the debris-covered land had looked like only a few months earlier, putting up the fence felt like an act of defiance. Only once did I mention the obvious: We were building closer to the floodplain, so surely the new stretches would be at greater risk.

My grandfather gave me a withering look. “Do you mean to warn a farmer that there might be maintenance required, Alford? Perhaps you don’t think I noticed that about my land?”

I kept my mouth shut after that and kept on painting. It was good to have something to do outdoors. I liked to be sore at night, scraping white paint from beneath my fingernails, looking out as the sun went down and our defiant fence line gleamed. From above, it was a beautiful thing to see. Only down below, when I was on my hands and knees in the dirt, did it occur to me that I was looking through bars, and then my mind would drift to my father.

Grandfather Cody didn’t speak of him or of my mother. It was as if she’d never visited at all. Sadly, the same was true of my grandmother. He held his grief within him, which left me afraid to speak of her, because I didn’t want to cause him pain. We abided in a house of absences, a situation made more acute by his refusal to turn on the radio. I believed he was trying to protect me from hearing news about my father, but eventually I began to wonder if he was really protecting himself. I finally broke him on the third week, and then it was only through the calculated deployment of my grandmother’s memory. I asked him if we might listen to The Guiding Light.

She’d become immensely fond of the serial, which involved a minister in a fictional Chicago suburb called Five Points. The townspeople relied upon the good preacher for guidance in any number of scenarios and found their way to him via a lamp in his study that always remained lit, a metaphor that my grandmother adored for its symbolism of the Gospel.

“We don’t need to hear that maudlin program,” he said.

“But I liked it, and Mom didn’t let me listen to it,” I said. That seemed to put Grandfather Cody in a corner, because after the theft of his car, he was convinced that the right position on any subject was the one my mother opposed. I’d never once sought to listen to The Guiding Light in my time with her, but it seemed the whitest of lies, more like a hypothesis, as I did find it unlikely that she would’ve tolerated the program.

“Well, I suppose we can catch up.” Grandfather Cody sighed. “I’m an old detective, past my prime, but I’ll wager the light is still on in Reverend Ruthledge’s study while the good people of Five Points have occasions of moral crisis all around him. He should dispense light bulbs along with his proverbs, if you ask me.”

And so the radio was turned on—finally!

We had a fine Atwater Kent console. It was a beautifully rounded piece of wood, shaped like a loaf of bread, with a speaker inlay of an elegant crest that reminded me of the head of the bishop on a chessboard. My grandmother had cherished the radio, which was a Christmas gift from my grandfather, though she often reproached him for having bought something so expensive. Watching Grandfather Cody kneel before the Atwater Kent set, delicately twist its knobs, wait patiently for the soft firelight glow of the frequency gauge to come on, then adjust it for the clearest signal, I was certain that she was on his mind. Each of his actions was slower—holier, that was the word—than usual, the everyday routine transformed into an act of ritual.

The episode was only fifteen minutes long, but that was enough time for me to forget my original goal—to have the radio on—and, apparently, for my grandfather to forget his original fear of it, because we both seemed surprised when the news bulletin brought my father’s name into the room.

“Authorities continue their fevered manhunt for Al Brady despite having two of his gang members in custody in Hancock County. James Dalhover and Edward ‘Nickel’ Terhune face charges of murder, robbery, and kidnapping, among numerous other offenses, but the most surprising news of the day is the announcement that Terhune intends to seek a jailhouse wedding ahead of his trial for capital crimes.”

My grandfather had been rolling a cigarette. He stopped now, the paper and tobacco held in fingers that seemed to tremble ever so slightly.

“Savannah Cody has petitioned the Hancock County courts to provide a marriage ceremony. It is understood that the accused murderer’s bride-to-be was his childhood sweetheart and is the mother of his son. When pressed on the subject of Terhune’s alleged crimes, Miss Cody refused further comment, declaring that she intends to address the public at a time of her choosing and stating that her story, quote, ‘has more layers than the wedding cake we will be enjoying before Eddie’s trial.’ ”

The announcer moved on to the aftermath of a tornado in another part of the state. I hardly heard a word of it. Grandfather Cody was holding the unfinished cigarette as if he’d forgotten it. After a long moment, he folded the paper meticulously, licked his fingertip, and ran it along the edges of the cigarette, his customary final touch, then set it aside without reaching for his matchbook. He rose and crossed the room, turned off the radio, and pivoted to the chess set that sat on the table beside it, black and white pieces lined up and waiting for a game. He moved the white queen’s pawn forward two spaces. I had no idea what to make of this.

“Do you want to play?” I ventured hesitantly.

“The game’s already on, Alford!” he replied cheerfully. “A fine gambit too. Tell me, did you ever play chess with your mother?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s for the best. She’d have beaten you soundly, and yet you wouldn’t have learned much about the game that should be replicated.”

Not knowing how to respond to that, I opted for silence.

“More layers than a wedding cake,” Grandfather Cody murmured, and he almost chuckled, then covered it with a cough. “I’m going to sit on the porch for a time. You can listen to the radio if you like.”

With that, he was gone, the screen door opening and closing softly on the spring night, and I sat where I was, unsure of whether I should follow him or turn the radio on. I finally opted to read a book, one my mother had bought for me in Huntington, Dan Hyland, Police Reporter. Hyland had an ample supply of resources at the Chicago Star, not the least of which was the monoplane he flew around while battling the empire of the notorious gangster Jules Sparoni. No sooner had Hyland landed the plane than Sparoni’s hitmen were after him, traveling in a “death limousine” that featured a machine gun.

The story was silly—even at twelve, I knew that—but fun. Tonight, though, the over-the-top action put me off. The phrase the staccato yammering of the death gun was no longer captivating or even amusing… it was real.

It was family.

After an hour, my grandfather came back inside, and he closed both the screen door and the main door behind him, indicating he was done for the day.

“Good night, Alford,” he said without looking in my direction.

“Grandpa…” I ventured, then stopped when he shot me a hard look.

“Well?” he prompted.

“I was… uh, I was wondering… will we go?”

“Go to what?”

“The wedding.”

He looked at my grandmother’s empty chair. “No,” he said. “We will not support that foolishness. I’m surprised you asked.”

His eyes drifted from the empty chair to a framed photograph of my grandmother taken on their wedding day. She wore a white dress with simple lace, and her hair was dark and her smile bright. I had never seen her without gray hair, and I’d rarely seen her smile. Grandfather Cody looked at the picture for a long time, then crossed the room, knelt, and unplugged the radio.

“We don’t need this. It’s an entertainment, nothing more. If I’m going to raise a boy to be a man and do it alone, well, I’ll have to start thinking of such things. A few months without nonsense will do us both good. You’ve got chores to do and lost schooling to make up for.” He paused, then added, “This summer, you need to read the book.”

There was no doubt what the book meant in our house. Lamentations of the Shenandoah sat in its green-and-gilt cover, a menacing tome, all 937 pages of its minuscule print.

“I’ve started it before,” I said meekly.

“Starting something isn’t worth a lick, Alford. Any lost soul has started a project or two. The difference between them and the people worthy of admiration is discipline. Start and finish, then do it again.”

“You said that book was an uphill climb.”

“I said that,” he replied, glowering as if it were unfair for me to use his own words against him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, if I said it, I meant it. And since when is an uphill climb not worth making?”

His tone had deepened and his eyes were cool and bright. I had the sense that I had become a stand-in for my mother. He couldn’t yell at her for the things that really mattered, but he had me trapped in the parlor with the old boring book.

“I’ll try it,” I muttered. “Again.”

“I’m tired of hearing about trying, as if the endeavor itself is impressive. Life is about results, not false starts and broken promises. There aren’t enough folks left in this family who can stick to their damn word.”

I nodded without speaking. The clock in the corner of the room ticked. Grandfather Cody’s shoulders slumped and he swallowed and seemed on the verge of offering more—maybe an apology, or at least some words of comfort—but then he turned abruptly, left the room, and went up the stairs.

I stuck my tongue out at the empty doorway where he had been, then felt mean and childish, a sensation that only deepened when I whirled away from the doorway and focused on the picture of my grandmother in her wedding dress. She was gone, and my grandfather seemed determined to play her role, not realizing that it meant stepping down from his own. On an ordinary day, he’d have been the foil to her fury, probably contending that we should go to the wedding.

I turned her photograph face down. That lasted for all of five seconds before I felt awful, lifted it, and gingerly dusted the frame and the glass with fingertips that were now damp from brushing tears from my eyes.

By sunrise, I was applying fresh white paint on pickets that served no purpose beyond marking my grandfather’s attempt to take back what the world had swept away. It was like setting up gravestones, I thought. Now, there was a job no kid dreamed of having.

Looking through the pickets at the slanted shadows they cast and beyond, I saw the fence as a world of bars again and thought of my father. How much of his life had been spent looking at shadows like those, only without the fresh breeze on his face? I suddenly hated that I was prettying it up.

I rose from my knees and flung the paintbrush away, spraying a fine mist of white across the soil, then kicked the fence until I succeeded in knocking the latest picket down. As soon as I heard the board crack, I felt guilty and afraid, gasoline on the fire of my anger. I would run away, I decided. That would teach Grandfather Cody. I would leave him here to build his fence alone.

I made it as far as the bluffs above the river, running with dreams of rafts and escape in my mind and tears hot in my eyes, before the guilt overwhelmed my anger, and I came to a gasping stop.

Running away was what my father and mother did. Staying home took its own kind of courage.

I followed my own painted footsteps back to the fence.

When Grandfather Cody brought me lunch a few hours later, I’d gotten the broken pickets back up, but the boards were cracked and no paint could hide that. He observed the fence, then looked at my right boot, which was covered in paint, then turned to eye the track I’d left to the river. I braced for the discipline that was surely coming.

“Even a good lumberyard will sell a split board from time to time,” he said. “And even a fine painter will step in a bucket on a bad day. A shame it all happened at once.”

I said nothing.

“We’ll get some more pickets when we go into town to have you fitted for a new suit,” he said. “I won’t have you wearing the same one you wore to…” He stopped, swallowed, then cleared his throat and spat. His eyes were on the river when he said, “Weddings and funerals shouldn’t feel the same, even if the wedding is a mistake.”

“We’re going?” I said, amazed.

“She’s my daughter,” he answered, and he left without another word.

20

NICKEL

AL BRADY STAYED missing.

Day after day, week after week, Nickel woke thinking the bulls would bang on his cell with news of Al’s capture—and they tested him with it, no doubt under the instruction of Hoover’s boys, naming one place or another where rumors put Brady. It was a poor effort, but not as poor as the snitch they moved into his cell.

“If it was me, I’d head for Arizona,” the rheumy-eyed old drunk said. “Scottsdale, maybe Tucson, somewhere where the folks who own boardinghouses keep their mouths shut and can spot a fed or a cop from a mile away. You ever hear Brady talk about Arizona?”

“All the time,” Nickel said. Then, when the snitch’s eyes brightened, Nickel explained that the only thing keeping Al from the desert sun was his allergy to cactus.

“He can hardly draw a breath in that air,” Nickel said. “Now, the swamps, on the other hand… good for his lungs. They ought to look in Okefenokee.”

Around that time, the snitch realized that Nickel was having him on; he made some vague remarks about hearing the electric chair was anything but a swift end and how the last thing you smelled was your own burning flesh, and then he was transferred to another cell.

Truth was, Nickel hadn’t the faintest idea where Al Brady might’ve gone. For all his faults, Brady had luck. There were men who were born to hang and others who could whistle past the graveyard. Luck wasn’t learned or bought or stolen. It was in the blood, as if dispensed by the whims of an amused God. Dillinger had luck. That scene up in Wisconsin in the place called Little Bohemia? No way in the world Dillinger should’ve escaped that trap, and yet he had.

Legend followed the lucky ones. That was fine. Nickel Terhune had never sought to be a legend, and he’d expected to be a dead man. There wasn’t much surprise in his predicament.

Except for Savannah.

Her name might as well be Surprise.

Come to think of it, he’d never learned what her name meant. He knew that her son’s name—his son’s, the boy he hadn’t seen in years now—meant “river ford.” That had a whole connotation for Savannah, some line in her great-grandfather’s novel. Somewhere in the text there was a bit about fording a river—Washington crossing the Delaware, was it? No, hell, that was the Revolution. Nickel hadn’t finished high school, but he could do better than that. Civil War, one of the big battles. What was the river out by Bull Run? It didn’t matter. Point was, the great novelist had used the name Alford, and Savannah latched onto that one night when she and Nickel were watching the Ohio River in the dark, with meteors lighting the sky, the Perseid showers, the best Nickel had ever seen, bursts of incandescent potential that denied the blackness, however briefly.

“If I ever have a son,” she’d said, “I know just what I’ll name him.”

Whether that was the night the boy had been conceived, Nickel couldn’t say, but he remembered the stunning sky and the swell of Savannah Cody’s breasts in the moonlight, the way the small of her back looked when she turned, hips lifted, back arched, long hair splayed across those lean shoulders, a sight that would make a monk abandon his monastery.

It was only later, walking back alone on the dirt road, the meteors lost to cloud cover, that Nickel realized she’d left him out of the whole deal. If I ever have a son.

Shouldn’t she have said we?

Maybe she’d had a premonition that night. They said women knew things. All Nickel knew was that Savannah Cody had been a riddle from the day he met her, and yet her past behavior seemed downright rational compared to her current actions.

They were going to be married.

To keep him out of the electric chair.

He’d seen the electric chair in Michigan City. A couple of guards had thought that was a funny thing to show him. It had been constructed using wood from the original gallows at the prison, they were happy to report. Looked like oak to Nickel, maybe cherry, a sturdy hardwood, and nicely varnished, which interested him, considering the chair’s purpose. Looked like the kind of serious seat that belonged to a serious man, a politician or a judge, like it would go behind a big desk. When it was just the chair on top of the rubber mat that protected the others in the room from surges of current, though, the impression was quite different. There were thick leather belts for binding the condemned man tight against the timber, and the legs of the chair had been outfitted with custom-made horseshoe-shaped brackets where the calves rested before the legs were cinched. The chair itself had been built by inmates, one of whom later rode its sparks off to the great beyond. Robert Collier, his name was, a Black man from Evansville who’d shot a cop whaling on him with a billy club.

“Do it and die,” he’d warned the cop before he was hit. The cop struck him.

Bang.

Nickel thought the story was too outlandish to be true—the first inmate electrocuted at the prison had helped construct the chair he died in out of wood from the old gallows?—but the guards swore it was gospel, and some inmates agreed, and eventually Nickel asked the chaplain, a man he trusted. The chaplain said the tale was true; he’d been one of the witnesses. When a reporter there asked Robert Collier if he had any last words, Collier said he didn’t want people to follow in his footsteps. “Get an education,” he’d said.

You couldn’t make that up. It was a story as insane as Savannah Cody.

Nickel had seen her two times since she’d proposed to him, and she’d done at least a few interviews, according to his incredulous fat-boy public defender.

“She’s demanding a wedding in the courthouse with a justice of the peace officiating,” the man informed Nickel, “and I assure you, it will not happen. If the judge allows you to marry, the wedding will be right here in the jail.”

Nickel told the fat boy he didn’t care where it happened, and on Savannah’s next visit, he told her the same thing. She smiled.

“Your lawyer is a doubter! The more the merrier. I wonder if he’s a fan of McNutt. Don’t ask him; I want it to be a surprise.”

They were sitting in the same cramped room where she’d proposed to him, across from each other at the scarred wooden table, shackles around Nickel’s ankles, cuffs on his wrists.

“McNutt?” Nickel said, clueless.

Savannah sighed and shook her head, a picture of disgust. “You would think, with all the time you have on your hands, you might at least read the newspaper.”

“I do read it.”

“Not just the sports page, Eddie.”

“I glance at all the stuff.”

“All the stuff,” she echoed. “Indeed. Keep perusing all the stuff and you’ll see the name Paul McNutt mentioned often. He was the governor until this year.”

“Oh, sure. McNutt.”

Savannah sighed again. “He’s now in the Philippines. High commissioner. Appointed by Roosevelt himself.”

“The Philippines have authority over the Michigan City electric chair?”

“It’s more nuanced than that.”

“Nuanced.”

“Complicated.”

“I know the word.”

“Then you no doubt understand that Paul McNutt has accepted the position in the Philippines because he has ambitions of succeeding President Roosevelt and needed international credibility. If one is contemplating a run for the presidency, one does not relish bad press. That’s where your friends come in.”

“What friends?”

Savannah grinned, a feline expression that called back old times.

“John Dillinger. Paul McNutt lobbied for Dillinger’s early release. I’ve been told—you can’t make this up—that McNutt was impressed by Dillinger’s performance in a prisoners’ baseball game and decided the poor lad should have a second chance at freedom and, thus, the major leagues.” She laughed with deep delight. “Baseball! Oh, how I hope the story is true. What I do know is true? McNutt submitted personal appeals to the parole board and Dillinger was released, and a few dead police officers later, Paul McNutt would certainly prefer that his role in the matter is forgotten.”

“How do you know all that?” Nickel marveled.

Savannah hesitated. “My mother’s correspondence.”

Her mother was dead, but that didn’t keep Nickel from tensing. Iris Cody could intimidate him from either side of the grave, it seemed.

“What did she have to do with it?”

Savannah patted his handcuffed hand. “Just tell your lawyer that you’ll be married in the courthouse yet. Leave the rest to me.”

She had a bravado that made you believe anything was possible.

“Maybe it works,” he said. “Maybe with your help, I even get out early, like Johnnie did. We could go somewhere else then. Leave Indiana.”

She looked confused. “Why would we go somewhere else?”

“To be a family.”

She snorted. “A family! Is the bathtub gin in here that strong?”

“Well, it’s what you want, isn’t it? In time, I mean?”

“I only want the story. You know that.”

“Sure. But a big part of a story, really the best part, I think, is the ending.”

She regarded him with a blend of patience and pity he recalled from schoolteachers. “What, pray tell, is our ending?”

“A quiet life. Up in Maine. I could run a garage, fix cars—”

“You’re a car thief, Eddie. No one is going to hire you as a mechanic.”

“Run a tavern, then. I can pour a beer. I’ve thought plenty about that. Got a name for the place and everything.”

“I know better than to ask, but go ahead.”

“Nickel Terhune’s Second-Chance Saloon. No, wait. Second-Act, that’s it. Nickel Terhune’s Second-Act Saloon.”

She gazed at him with fresh interest, a hint of the old hope she’d once held for him, a hope that had died outside of a church where the corn was high and the blood dripped out of a police car and into the dust.

“It’s not bad. They’d use it in plenty of headlines.”

“I’m not hunting headlines.”

She studied him. “Maine,” she said. “You still want to see it.”

“Sure. That lake that’s so big they’ve got steamboats on it like the ones we saw on the Ohio when we were kids.”

“You haven’t given up.” She sounded surprised.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be Maine. Go west, go south, the mountains or the desert. I’m just saying, a fresh start.”

She took a deep breath. “In the best-case scenario—the one in which Paul McNutt is drafting a telegram right now—you’re still fifteen years from a fresh start.”

“Maybe not. I didn’t kill anyone, and Michigan City gets crowded.”

“You really are a dreamer,” she said, and he thought it was the first time there’d been a note of respect in her voice. And she liked the name of his tavern. That counted for something, right?

Later, alone in his cell, he could still smell her perfume, and he thought about her writing letters to a damned presidential candidate on his behalf and couldn’t help but feel a tiny bit of hope. She could make you believe the impossible.

Nickel would still be sentenced to life in prison, but you needed to consider the long game. Times changed, judges and prosecutors came and went, and new villains rose. They had more convicts than cells, and nobody understood the value of tomorrow’s headlines better than a politician. There would come a time when Nickel Terhune no longer commanded a headline. He’d be expendable then, rotated back into the free world so they could lock up another dumb son of a bitch, one who was more politically useful. Way of the world.

Ten years, maybe twenty. Sounded like a lot, but time moved like the wind: You were aware of it only when it was blowing hard in your face. Between gusts, you didn’t think much about it.

Nickel could do ten years.

His son would be grown by the time he was out, of course, but maybe a relationship could be formed. Nickel would have plenty of time to write. Could be a brick building without bars in the windows waited down the road for him.

Nickel Terhune’s Second-Act Saloon.

Downstairs, a man whooped and banged on his cell door with a tin cup. Nickel closed his eyes and imagined the sound was a bell buoy in the tossing ocean. He saw water breaking on rocks and imagined a town rising away from a harbor that he’d not yet seen but knew existed. Church steeples pierced the shadowed silhouettes of low mountains in the moonlight, and warm lights glowed in the windows of narrow brick buildings. One of the buildings had his name on it. The door opened, and the door closed. People walked in and out with the easy manners that came when freedom was expected. Behind the scarred oak bar was a long low mirror and a rack of whiskey bottles and beer glasses. It was a respectable joint, no fighting, no guns, just the sound of a baseball game on the radio and the low laughter of law-abiding neighbors. You wouldn’t get rich, but you’d make a living.

The place wouldn’t seem like much to most folks, but it was enough.

Long before the drunk ceased banging on the bars of his cage, Nickel Terhune was asleep with a soft smile on his face.

21

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: You’ve maintained that you were never an active participant in a robbery, yet you were on the scene of one.

I did not participate in any robbery. The only one I was “on the scene” of, as you put it, was an unfortunate aftermath. It was also when I left Eddie.

Toland: Are you speaking now about the murder of Paul Minneman?

I’m speaking of a tragedy.

Toland: We call the shooting of a police officer in the line of duty a murder, Miss Cody.

I don’t blame you for that. I think it could be both, though. I suspect his family would agree with me. I was on the scene for that, yes, but I didn’t lift a gun, and you know it. It was the worst day of my life—or at least the worst day until Bangor. But I know you don’t want me getting the events out of order, do you? You want to hear about Officer Minneman. May I have another cigarette?

Toland: You look a little emotional.

I’d never seen a man die before, Agent Toland. I’d never even seen an animal die, and I grew up on a farm. I refused to watch the butchering of any of the animals, even chickens. I simply couldn’t bear to be around it. So, yes, I’m emotional.

Toland: Tell me how you ended up at the scene of a murder without being an active participant.

It was supposed to be the last job. Eddie and I had agreed on that. Brady was getting wilder, was taking more risks, and was more obsessed with Dillinger by the day. He didn’t want the money anymore; he wanted to be famous. He loved the headlines. Eddie wasn’t even involved in most of the robberies that spring. He really wasn’t.

Why not? Because of mad dogs.

Toland: Explain that.

Eddie’s father always had guard dogs. He liked them mean. Eddie loved dogs more than he loved people. He could talk a mean dog down. He’d sneak off and work with them when his daddy was gone or drunk, which was most of the time, and Eddie would show those dogs kindness. He was a natural with a pup. But over the years, his father had a couple that even Eddie couldn’t cure. It was as if they grew to like being savage. They were the mad dogs, the way he told it, and once it set in, there was always going to be blood. He told me that when I was no more than seventeen. Years later, we were in a hotel room in Cleveland, a real nice place down on Euclid Avenue, what they called the Millionaires’ Row. We were in bed, shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the ceiling, and he was smoking a cigarette and passing it to me now and then, and we weren’t saying much. Just getting our breath back, if you take my meaning.

That was when he told me Al Brady and James Dalhover were becoming mad dogs.

I understood.

Toland: You do a wonderful job of telling stories you weren’t asked to tell. The question was about the Minneman murder.

I haven’t forgotten your damn question. There are answers that matter more than the black-or-white, yes-or-no kind, and I don’t think you’re smart enough to understand that. I’ll stop wasting words on you.

The day Paul Minneman died was supposed to be Eddie’s last ride with Al Brady and James Dalhover. They were going to hit a bank in Goodland. That’s in Indiana, Cass County. Eddie was driving. I never saw him with a gun in his hand until that day. After that, I never saw him without one. Except for when he was in a cell, of course.

Toland: If he was driving, where were you?

Waiting at the church. How about that choice? If my mother were still alive, she would have plenty to say about that symbolism. The church was nineteen miles away from the bank. I was there in a car we’d bought fair and square—well, the money was stolen, but what I mean is the car was titled in my name and we’d paid for it at a dealership like regular citizens. I didn’t want to leave Indiana in a stolen car. I was firm on that.

The plan was, they’d hit the bank, Eddie would drive, and once they got to the church, Brady and Dalhover would swap the getaway car for another one they’d already have there, a maroon Ford with Michigan plates. They’d go their way, and Eddie and I would go ours.

Toland: Where?

Maine. Moosehead Lake. Same silly place we’d talked about in all those letters when he was in prison. We kept coming back to that. For me, it was about Thoreau. For Eddie, it was about the map, always the map. So much green and blue up there, and so few roads. We came at it from different directions, but the idea wasn’t so different: isolation and renewal. No matter how you look at it, I suppose what I’m talking about is the American Dream—fleeing to freedom and fresh starts, right? Anyhow, that was the plan.

Toland: And what spoiled the grand plan, Miss Cody?

I already told you: mad dogs. At that point, it ends with a bullet. Didn’t you hear me say that? Write it down and underline it. The first time I heard about mad dogs was on a perfect summer night that belonged to young lovers and starlight, but the first time I saw it in action was outside a church at a crossroads in cornfield country.

I knew there was trouble when I heard the sirens. The church had been picked because it was far enough from the bank that when they reached it, they’d know they were in the clear, and police wouldn’t be likely to check churches. It was a small white church with a tall steeple. I was parked in our new car, a Studebaker, with that maroon Ford beside me. The cars were behind the church so I couldn’t see much of the road, just the fields beyond. The whole time I waited, only four cars passed. It was a quiet spot.

Then I heard the sirens, and I knew things weren’t going according to plan.

What had happened, the way Eddie told me later, was that they came up on a state trooper who wasn’t even involved in the chase. Everything had gone smoothly at the bank—smooth enough, anyhow—except there was a time lock on the vault so they had to wait fifteen minutes they hadn’t planned on. That was the only hitch. Then they hit the road, following the route Eddie had planned out. He turned left just west of a place called Royal Center and saw a police car on the road ahead of them. The police were probably getting the radio report about that time. Eddie wanted to stay behind them. He thought doing anything else would draw attention. Brady wasn’t having that. He told him to turn around, so Eddie did.

Well, that caught the trooper’s eye. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how the day might have ended if they’d just driven behind him for another mile or two. Up until that day, they were just thieves. Not murderers.

Not cop-killers.

After Eddie made the U-turn, the cop followed, then he put the lights and the siren on. Eddie laid on the gas then—he was a fine driver, fast but steady—and got out in front. When I saw their car, there were no police in sight, only the sound. Eddie came tearing into the church parking lot like it was the Indianapolis 500 and all of them scrambled out, and everybody had a gun. Like I told you, it was the first time I’d seen Eddie with a gun. He had a pistol; I’m not sure what kind. Dalhover had a big rifle like soldiers carry. And Al Brady had the machine gun. They ran right into the field beside the church and got down in the corn. Eddie was waving for me to do the same, but I was frozen. I just sat there with my hands on the wheel, holding it as tightly as if I were driving, but the engine wasn’t even on. Then the police car came into view, driving slowly.

Let me smoke a minute.

All right. Thank you.

The church parking lot was dirt, and you could see the tire tracks. I think that’s what the policeman noticed. Minneman, yes, I know his name. I think he was probably a smart police officer. Noticing those tracks in the middle of a chase, with all the adrenaline… well, that makes me think of stories my father would tell about good detectives.

The reason I believe he noticed the tracks was that he opened the door a little bit and looked out, but he didn’t look up. He kept his head down, studying the dirt.

That was when the machine gun went off, or maybe it was the rifle. I can’t tell you for sure which came first. All I know is they were both shooting, and they were so loud. I’ll never forget the sound.

Toland: Did you know Officer Minneman was shot more than twenty times?

I didn’t, but I believe it. They shot him right out of the car. He’d opened the door to get a look at the tracks, and it was still in gear. After they shot him, he fell out and sideways, into the dirt, and the car kept going. With no one inside to press down on the gas pedal, it couldn’t gather much speed, but it kept coming. Just crawling along, full of bullet holes and broken glass and blood. It rolled all the way up to the church and didn’t stop until it hit the building. There was something about that… have you ever seen a minister put his hand on a Bible or maybe watched the way a mourner touches a tombstone? That’s the way it felt when that police car finally hit the church.

Toland: You said the car was empty. It wasn’t.

I know that now. I thought it was empty then because there was no one driving. The car just rolled ahead, so I assumed he’d been alone. Then the passenger door opened and the other officer climbed out holding a shotgun. He got upright before the machine gun started firing again.

That would’ve been Al Brady with his finger on the trigger, if you’re keeping score. He just poured bullets into the man. They knocked the gun out of his hands and put holes in his chest, bright red holes; I could see them open up. He kept moving, though. Trying to get away, get safe. Not running, exactly, sort of staggering, the way a drunk runs. He was heading for the cornfield on the other side of the drive. Like he could get there and hide and wait for help. He made it right to the edge and then tripped and fell. His face and shoulders were hidden in the corn but his boots were still poking out.

Al sent Eddie out to get him. He walked over, moving real slow, and he had the pistol in his hand. I felt as if I’d never seen him before. He was someone different. Or at least I needed to believe he was someone different.

He looked over at me while he walked. There was a moment, just a blink, when it seemed like we were alone. Then he turned away. Walked up to the deputy—I found out later he was a deputy—and kicked his boot. The way he did that… it was like I was watching his father instead of him. There was a meanness to him, a contempt. Eddie had never had that in him. His father always had.

Now, here’s what you already know from the farmer who testified, the one who watched it all from down the road: Eddie didn’t take a shot when he could have. Dalhover hollered at him to do it, I think he said, “Finish him!” but Eddie didn’t take a shot. He called back that it was already done, that the deputy was dead.

You might think I’m trying to make him sound like a hero or something in that moment for telling the lie and refusing to take the point-blank shot. Or if not a hero, at least a better man than the rest. I believe he was better, but the truth is, I’ll never know for sure whether he chose not to shoot that cop so the man could live or because he really thought he was dead. I mean, the newspapers made it sound like a miracle that the deputy survived, and I believe it. I saw him take those bullets and I saw him fall.

All I can say for sure is Eddie didn’t take the shot. They told him to do it, and he didn’t. What was in his head and his heart at that moment—well, when it comes to that, I can only hope.

That was the last day for us as a romantic couple.

In a lot of ways, it was the last day, period.

22

NICKEL

SAVANNAH’S TALK ABOUT Paul McNutt hadn’t been idle.

McGee, the fat-boy lawyer, looked positively despondent.

“Are they hanging me tonight?” Nickel asked. “Not waiting for trial?”

“What? No, no.” The fat boy waved him off dismissively, as if the trial were of no importance. “Your… bride-to-be, I suppose I must call her, has made a remarkable yet effective nuisance of herself with state and federal authorities.”

“She’s not one to back down from a plan because someone else tells her to,” Nickel said. “She has to decide to do it herself.”

“Well, she’s evidently interested enough to persuade powers who have no reasonable interest or authority in your case. You’re to be married by the county clerk at the courthouse, which is utterly foolish, considering it’s less than a mile down the road and will consume an inordinate amount of resources.”

“So she got her way is what you’re saying?”

The fat boy flushed. “It seems so.”

Nickel laughed. “I should’ve bet you. A few weeks back, you’d have put the title to your car in the bargain.”

“I assure you I’m no gambler.”

“I believe it.”

“Don’t fool yourself into thinking this is some sort of leave from custody, Mr. Terhune. The whole circus will take no more than an hour. You’ll be transferred by police car, in chains, naturally, but this madwoman—apologies, your, uh, fiancée—has convinced a God-fearing prosecutor that it is better for a woman to have a murderer for a husband than a bastard for a son.”

“None taken,” Nickel said.

The fat boy blinked. “What?”

“I’ve taken no offense, sir. I could have misconstrued those remarks, but I didn’t.”

“Yes. Well.” The fat boy took a breath, shook his head. Nickel wanted to bloody the man’s nose, but that would likely reverse Savannah’s impressive achievement.

“How’d she do it?” he asked, wondering if the fat boy knew about the Dillinger file and Paul McNutt, the presidential hopeful who was currently supervising the Philippines.

“I understand she presented a written argument with copious citations of scripture and the endorsements of some of Indiana’s finest gentlemen.”

“Her family were writers,” Nickel offered.

“So I’ve heard. At any rate, I’ve been instructed to inform you that security will be intense. Even the deputies who ordinarily have the day off will be on duty to ensure that you make no attempt to escape.”

He seemed pleased to report this, smiling smugly and adjusting his bow tie.

“I’ve no intention of trying to escape,” Nickel said, and he didn’t. As a matter of fact, he’d made his peace with his cell and the jailhouse routine—it was familiar and would become more so. He could occupy his mind with saloon plans.

“I have further been instructed to advise you that the FBI will not cooperate on your charges indefinitely. If you don’t provide actionable intelligence about Al Brady, the electric chair is all but certain.”

“You keep telling me that,” Nickel said. “Let me ask you, do you think I’m hearing from him inside this cell? Pigeons and secret codes?”

“I’m conveying the information, Mr. Terhune. I would advise you to stop treating your execution as an amusement.”

“It has yet to amuse me,” Nickel assured him.

That was that. The fat boy left, the guards took Nickel back to his cell, and only then, once he was alone, did he let himself laugh aloud.

She’d done it. Damn all, Savannah had done it.

The location of the ceremony didn’t mean a lick to him, but it certainly did to her. There would be press on hand, he was sure of that, probably photographers from the big papers in Chicago and maybe New York. Everything she’d dreamed of.

Nickel had a sense that she was going to be looking her best, and she was a showstopper even at her worst. He wondered if Wendell Cody would be there. If Nickel might get to see his own son.

That took the laughter out of him. He wanted to be able to look the boy in the eye and offer simple, honest words of apology, but that would be hard to do in all the chaos, and he didn’t want reporters scribbling down quotes and photographers popping flashbulbs in the poor kid’s face.

He shook his head and sat down on the cot. There was no use worrying about what he could not control. They hadn’t allowed him to have pen and paper, on account of the FBI’s suspicions that he’d write letters to Al Brady in secret code, but his lawyer had been so flustered today that he’d left a pencil on the table and Nickel had been able to palm it. He took it out now and tested the lead on the block wall of his cell. It showed up clearly and wiped away easily with a spit-dampened thumb.

Good.

He spent the rest of the afternoon sketching plans for his saloon. What had once felt foolish was suddenly the slightest bit more realistic. Savannah Cody had summoned help from the fucking Philippines.

Anything was possible.

On the evening before his wedding, Nickel was awake, as he figured most men would be on the night before their wedding. His concern wasn’t the next day—that would be a fast affair—but the horizon. His future.

He was thinking how nice it would be to have plate glass on the front and back of the saloon, one facing the street, the other facing the ocean or maybe a mountain, when he heard the machine gun start up outside the jail. First came the clatter of bullets leaving the drum, then the hailstone hits as they scorched limestone.

Al Brady was here.

Nickel swung his feet off the bunk but didn’t rise—no point rushing to stand in a cell unless the door was open—and watched as the lone guard raced up the steps, panting, and looked at Nickel.

“There’s shooting!” the guard said.

No shit, Nickel thought, but the kid was scared, so Nickel only nodded in agreement, then added, “A lot of it.”

On cue, another burst of gunfire etched the exterior of the building, a stuttering staccato without the clean flow of a Thompson, which pounded like a waterfall when firing properly. Something was off with it. Probably the firing pin or perhaps a fouled extractor. Al Brady never did know how to clean a gun.

Shouts came up from the cell blocks on the first and second floors. Dalhover was on the second, Nickel believed. They were sequestered from the locals so as to limit their ability to recruit any more gangsters, and it had been the sheriff himself who told Nickel with pride that this building had secured none other than D. C. Stephenson, a former Ku Klux Klan leader who’d damn near been elected governor of the state until he was convicted of raping a girl on a train. Nickel had allowed that that was a pretty impressive guest, suggested maybe they should put up a plaque, but the sheriff hadn’t found that funny.

Now the sheriff was gone and the lone guard was staring at Nickel, face flushed, mouth open, the poor kid maybe eighteen years old, the type who’d read comic books about this moment but never imagined it would actually come to his little town.

“Probably ought to help them down there,” Nickel suggested, and the kid nodded emphatically as if Nickel were his damn baseball coach, then drew his billy club, perhaps planning to bat the bullets out of the sky, wheeled, and ran back down the steps.

Nickel was alone again, and the gunfire ceased, though the shouting continued. No sirens yet. Just that one dumb kid racing downstairs with his club in his hand.

Nickel was sure it was Al. Who else would shoot up a damn jail in the middle of the night? Made for big headlines, that kind of stunt. Yeah, Al had to be smiling.

But why was he done shooting? Had the gun finally jammed?

Silence. Nickel sat and waited. Nobody else ran up. There were usually three night guards, but Nickel had seen only the one boy in the past several hours, and it occurred to him that this might well be his fault: The sheriff had changed shifts to account for Nickel’s nuptials.

Footsteps on the stairs. Boot heels and heavy breaths. Nickel tilted his head, saw the kid guard coming back, and knew from his face that he wasn’t alone. No billy club in his hand anymore either.

There was a short, slim man with a pistol pressed to the small of the guard’s back. Nickel saw him and grinned.

“Clarence,” he said. “How dumb you gotta be, riding with Al on a deal like this?”

Clarence Shaffer was a regular with Brady and Dalhover, but he hadn’t had a damn thing to do with the hostage scene that had gotten them into this fix, so what had possessed him to join up for an assault on the county jail? It was a puzzle unless you knew Clarence—then it made some kind of sense. He was the mad-dog kind, got bored fast, and it wouldn’t be hard to sell him on a suicide mission if it promised enough excitement.

“Unlock him,” Clarence said, and the kid guard got the cell keys out with shaking hands.

Nickel finally stood up. He almost thought better of it. Odds were, by the time he made it downstairs and out onto the street, they’d have sharpshooters in place. Seemed easier to stay up here and wait for his sentence. Besides, he was supposed to get married in the morning.

Then again…

The iron cell door banged open, and freedom beckoned.

“Let’s fuckin’ go,” Clarence shouted, and then the guard was inside the cell, and Nickel was out of it, and as he stumbled down the stairs behind Clarence, his bad leg aching, he had the passing thought that this wasn’t bringing him any closer to the Second-Act Saloon.

Go back, he told himself. Go back and claim the benefits of being a good prisoner. You might make it to that tavern yet if you just get back in the cell.

But he was in motion, following Clarence toward the gunfire, and the sketch on the wall was out of sight.

Clarence turned right, Nickel followed, and they were facing a shot-up back door on the second floor. Dalhover waited by it, grinning his wild grin. Machine-gun fire hit the building again—Brady had fixed the gun enough to shoot, although the sound was still unsteady. A single siren sounded somewhere far off.

“He did it! That son of a bitch Al did it!” Dalhover whooped.

“We’ll see,” Nickel said, still thinking there’d be a bullet waiting for him on the other side of that door, some small, strange part of him wishing that Clarence hadn’t made it as far as the third floor, that they’d pulled off this escape with Dalhover but not him, leaving his own fate up to Savannah Cody and the governor.

But when Dalhover kicked the door open, no bullets rode in on the night wind, just warm, clean air that smelled of smoke and gunpowder.

Al Brady stood on the sidewalk beneath them, his hat cocked low, jacket open, machine gun held loose in his hands, like a bluesman with his favorite horn, ready for the big number.

“Fellas,” he called conversationally as if it were just another evening, “let’s get moving.”

“I’ll be damned,” Dalhover said by way of greeting.

Nickel knew that truer words had never been uttered. Dalhover was damned and Nickel would be at his side when the eternal scales were settled for them. No presidential hopeful in the Philippines was saving him now.

The wind whistled, warm and soft as a kiss.

Nickel limped out of the jail and into the night.

“Can you drive better than you can run?” Al Brady asked, falling into step beside him.

“Won’t take much to find out, will it?”

“Then do it.”

They swung around into the front of the jail and Brady lit up the street with another burst from the machine gun. It was misfiring, just as Nickel had suspected, the flow interrupted, the brass ejecting in flat lines rather than smooth arcs, but it was still shooting. Brady’s small body rocked with the recoil, but the bullets did the necessary work—the jail stayed quiet, no police officer feeling brave enough to run out into the street and intervene, given all that gunfire. If anyone was even still alive inside. Nickel had no idea what had occurred on the ground floor that led to his sudden presence on the outside.

He hoped they hadn’t killed the guards. The Hancock County screws hadn’t been bad guys. It was a job to them; that was all.

“Get to the Olds and drive!” Brady bellowed.

There was a long black Olds parked in the middle of the street, no attempt made to hide it. Nickel opened the driver’s door and fell behind the wheel. Dalhover scrambled into the back seat through the passenger door, Clarence behind him, and then, finally, Brady. The Olds was a two-door sedan, most of its length hood and engine, paint the color of the night sky, white wheel flares and whitewall tires and enough chrome on the front to put a dent in a locomotive. Undeniably stylish and, even better, it had an all-steel roof. The latter was something not every driver cared about. Those who were expecting to take gunfire, however, liked it fine.

He shifted the car into gear, mashed the gas, smoked the tires. Brady put the window down, twisted, eyed the street behind them.

Silent.

“Fuckers weren’t counting on this!” he said, and hooted.

No, the fuckers certainly had not been. Neither had Nickel, for that matter. Events felt like they were coming at him too fast and with little guarantee of victory. Whatever Savannah Cody had achieved on his behalf was irrelevant now. Staying in Indiana meant a trip to the chair that had been built by a man who later sat in it, recommended the benefits of education, and was then cooked in his own carpentry.

Best to get gone and stay gone, then.

He checked the speedometer. Sixty and rising. One distant siren, no flashing lights. How in the hell had Hancock County been so unprepared?

My wedding, he thought.

“How’d you pick tonight?” he asked Brady.

“Thank yourself,” Brady said, and laughed. “Guard numbers were down for the big wedding tomorrow. Most nights, there were four armed guards on duty. Tonight was just one deputy on the ground floor and some kid who looked like he was ready to shit his pants every time he passed a window. Then the deputy went out to get dinner! I swear, I couldn’t believe it. He walked out and up the street and went to meet the fuckin’ sheriff himself. The two of them are sitting in the diner back there drinking coffee and eating pie. Probably making plans for the big day tomorrow, fuckin’ Nickel Terhune being transported to the courthouse.”

Well, there you had it.

“How in the hell did you stay out of sight?” Dalhover asked him from the back. “It’s a small damn town!”

“Wore a wig and grew a mustache and sat right on the main street and was never so much as questioned. They’ve had so many reporters and FBI boys in this town that I might as well have had a press pass or a badge.”

“Wasn’t a single person ever asked us what we were doing here,” Clarence agreed. “We sat at the counter where the sheriff is right now, and the waitresses were telling us about all the excitement while pouring coffee. Was Nickel who distracted them, I think. Hell, how’d you come up with that scheme? A wedding before a murder trial! Damn, boy, that’s some clever!”

All of them laughing now as the Olds hit seventy, then eighty, the highway opening up ahead, only two sets of taillights in the distance, the night moonless and clear. Indiana was going to need more cops, Nickel thought, the way things were going. Dillinger, Barker, Baby Face, now Brady and the rest? Yes, they would need more police officers.

But even as the names of the famous gangsters ran through his mind, he thought, Dead, dead, dead.

Rabbits and foxes. Bet on the foxes.

Fuck.

“How’d you get away from that house, Al?” Dalhover asked as Nickel slowed, turned south, then accelerated again, checking the rearview mirror for the pursuers’ lights that were somehow still not visible.

“What house?”

“The one where we got arrested, you dumb son of a bitch!”

“The doc’s? Ha! I drove slow, is all. With the woman, it wasn’t hard. Just another old married couple out for a drive. Went ten miles, pulled off the highway, and waited until all the police cars had screamed east and west enough times to get tired of that stretch of road. Long enough to get a blow job from the doc’s wife.”

And as Dalhover and Clarence laughed, Nickel heard his own words, hot and harsh, as if they came from some other man: “She’d have bitten your pecker clean off if you even tried it.”

Why he’d said it, he had no idea. Just a memory of the redhead with the angry eyes and proud shoulders. Marilyn, that was her name. A doctor’s wife in a pretty house with a perfect yard, yes, but he remembered her eyes, and they hadn’t fit that house and yard. They’d been fierce and fearless. No way she would blow Al Brady, not even with a gun to her head.

The car had gone quiet. Al looked at Nickel, shifted the machine gun, and said in a low, tight voice, “You want to take another try at that, Terhune? Maybe remembering I just shot your dumb ass out of a jail cell?”

Nickel had heard that voice before, most often before shooting started. He gripped the steering wheel harder, forced a grin, and said, “Ah, hell, Al, you caught me in a bad mood. I was supposed to be married tomorrow, and now I’m with you dumb oxes and not a woman in sight.”

A poor effort, but just enough. Just barely enough. Dalhover grunted a chuckle; Brady managed a smirk.

“We’ll fix that, you ungrateful son of a bitch. Get you to a whorehouse and get your mind right.”

“Now you’re talking,” Nickel said.

Silence followed. All around him was the endless night and the empty road, and he passed through the world with only these men who smelled of gun smoke. Once, he thought, there had been a river and a mill pond and hayloft hopes, dreams as plentiful as the fireflies in the valley that lay between his heart and his home. Just an hour ago, there’d been a sketch of a simple saloon in a quaint harbor town. It had been etched on a jail cell’s wall, sure, but it had been possible in there. It would not be again.

23

ALFORD

SWEDE BROUGHT US the news. He rarely stopped by the house until late morning, so my grandfather and I were both surprised to hear him knock on the front door while we ate breakfast in the kitchen. We never used the formal dining room anymore; the china was still set as my grandmother had left it.

“Come in,” Grandfather Cody called.

Swede didn’t come in. Grandfather frowned and wiped his mouth with his napkin and crossed to the door. Swede said something soft, and Grandfather Cody cast a quick look over his shoulder at me.

“Finish your eggs, Alford.”

He stepped out and closed the door behind him. I went to the window. Swede was fidgeting, nervous. Grandfather Cody stood tall and motionless and looked at the fields and the river beyond instead of at Swede. Their voices were too soft to be heard inside, and the window was down. If I lifted it, I knew Grandfather Cody would hear the creak, so I settled for straining my ears and cursing the walls. I heard only a few words, but they weren’t insignificant: jail, police, FBI. At length, Grandfather Cody nodded, clapped Swede on the shoulder, and came back inside. Too late, I scrambled into my chair and picked up my fork.

“Catch it all?” Grandfather Cody asked, not fooled.

“What?” I tried for innocence, failed, shook my head, and lowered the fork.

“I should lecture you about eavesdropping but turns out there was no need for him to call me outside.” He leaned against the doorframe, tugging absently at his mustache. “Your father is missing.”

“Missing?”

“For now. Won’t be for long. Al Brady and some friends went to Hancock County last night. They shot up Greenfield and broke your father and James Dalhover out of the jail.”

“They escaped?”

“For now,” he repeated. Then, with a mighty sigh, he said, “Your mother is being interviewed by the FBI. I’d like to say that’s fine and they can have her, but…”

His words trailed off; he shook his head once, a slow, sad gesture like a tired mule’s, then swung his weight off the doorframe.

“Pack an overnight bag, Alford.”

We made the three-hour drive north in silence. Outside of Greenfield, traffic slowed. I saw a roadblock with deputies checking the cars. We eased up to it; a deputy’s eyes flicked from me to my grandfather, saw no risk, and waved us along. In town, cars were double-parked all around the square, and photographers stood on the roofs of cars taking pictures of a brick structure that I assumed was the jail.

“You don’t think she helped him, do you?” I blurted out.

Grandfather Cody looked at me with cold eyes. “My daughter wouldn’t shoot up a town with a machine gun, Alford.”

He parked, then stepped out into the street and stood with his feet spread wide and his hands on his hips, gazing up the road. I took the same stance, unconsciously at first, then with more awareness. The sun spread his silhouette tall and broad in front of me, providing a perfect map, and although he was unaware of my imitation behind him, I was pleased by everything about it except for the size disparity. When he moved his head slowly from left to right and back, I did the same. While I was watching the shadows, though, he was assessing the street.

“They’re waiting on her,” he said.

“What?”

“Your mother. All those sons of—” He checked himself, the way he might have if my grandmother had been in earshot. “All the photographers climbing on their cars like alley cats chasing garbage? They’re waiting on someone to come out of the sheriff’s office, and it isn’t the sheriff himself.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the sheriff of Hancock County isn’t interesting to an East Coast newspaperman. Your mother…” He sighed and rolled his shoulders as if loosening up before commencing hard work. “She likely is.”

With that, he set off for the jail. I trailed behind, keeping close, though taking pains to maintain the separation of our shadows. I wanted my own silhouette, however small, to at least remain distinct. I didn’t want it to disappear entirely.

When we turned right, the jail obscured the morning sun, and both of our shadows were gone.

“No press allowed inside,” a uniformed patrolman called languidly from about a block away, his tone suggesting he’d given the same instruction a hundred times already.

“Couldn’t agree more!” Grandfather called cheerfully, and he kept walking, oblivious to the officer’s shout for him to slow down, then to his question about our identities. We kept going, right up the steps and into the building. The lobby was small but clean and cool, smelling of fresh disinfectant. I wondered if the cleanser had been used to swab up blood. There was a single man in uniform behind a desk, ruddy-faced and with a cap that seemed a size too small.

“Sorry, bud,” he said. “Office is closed for the investigation. County clerk will be—”

“I’m looking for my daughter,” Grandfather Cody said. “Her name is Savannah Cody.”

The policeman looked from my grandfather to me and then back.

“Sir, I’m not permitted to—”

“Could be I’m mistaken,” Grandfather said, “but unless I am, the question you’ll need to answer is: Does she have a lawyer with her?”

A few seconds ticked by. The policeman said, “Why don’t you wait there?”

“Happy to.”

The policeman left the lobby, slipping through a door he opened as little as possible, as if to obscure whatever was happening on the other side. When he returned, he was trailed by a slender man in a black suit, white shirt, and blue tie. The man’s eyes were winter gray and just as warm.

“I understand you’re family of Miss Cody.”

“That’s correct,” Grandfather Cody said. “And who are you?”

“I understand you’d like to see her,” the man in the suit said, “but our agents are not yet finished with their interviews, so your daughter—”

“Getting ahead of yourself,” Grandfather Cody interrupted. “The only question sent your way so far was about your own name. Start there.”

There was a pause. Then the man smiled faintly, although it didn’t reach his eyes.

“Dennis Toland,” he said. “Special agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

He was a genuine G-man, a character in my Dan Hyland novel come to life. He didn’t look like a hero, though. If anything, he looked like my barber—only meaner.

“Good to meet you, Agent Toland. I’m Wendell Cody, retired, a former detective myself.”

“A Burns man,” Toland said, as if that were cause for contempt. “Yes, I’ve heard about you.”

“I haven’t heard about you, just about your boss and his boy Purvis.”

I knew this meant Melvin Purvis—he’d shot Dillinger and captured Pretty Boy Floyd and was a national celebrity—so I was confused why my grandfather said his name as if it were an insult. I myself listened to Purvis’s Junior G-Men radio program, and he was the face of Post Toasties cereal.

Toland’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll be hearing about more of us. Plenty more.”

“I hope so. There are bad men out there who need to be apprehended, and I gather a few of them left this jail and likely aren’t headed to join Melvin in Hollywood. But I’ve no interest in that affair; I’m looking for my daughter.”

“She’s in the midst of interviews with federal agents, sir. Not the sort of scenario we can interrupt for a family chat.”

“You can interrupt any interview you choose, if I understand Hoover’s mandate as he proposed it. You Bureau boys do what you wish where you wish, isn’t that the idea?”

Toland’s face reddened, points of white on his cheeks. He looked nothing like the barber in Madison now.

“We’re not lacking authority, Mr. Cody, that’s correct. And we won’t be ceasing our interviews with the suspect until—”

“Suspect of what?”

Toland straightened his tie. “It’s an interesting coincidence that the jailbreak of bank robbers and murderers happened to occur during the distraction caused by your daughter’s proposal.”

“I don’t think it’s relevant.”

Toland scoffed. “You were a detective, you say?”

“That’s right. If I were still one, it might occur to me that Al Brady likes to read the newspapers. The transporting of Edward Terhune for the marriage ceremony—which was a foolish idea in the first place, all due respect to this county’s elected officials—was made public days ago. Much effort would go into securing the inmates on the day of the wedding, we were told, with extra manpower. It doesn’t seem as if matching effort went into securing the inmates yesterday, the day before the wedding, and Brady appears to have taken advantage of that. If you’re looking for his coconspirators in the jailbreak, you’d be wise to stop talking to Savannah and start talking to the press. While you think that over, I’d like to speak to my daughter—or the lawyer that is surely inside the interview room with her at this moment.”

Toland’s chest rose but didn’t fall, a breath trapped in his lungs.

“I will be damned,” he said softly, “if I take orders from some call girl’s father. I certainly have no interest in your critique of my work given your own history with that headline hound Bill Burns.”

My grandfather did not move yet seemed to grow. The longer he stared at Toland, the smaller the other man seemed.

“I’m not a detective any longer,” Grandfather Cody said. “Not for William J. Burns or for your dandy boss. What I am, sir, is a God-fearing Indiana farmer.”

He paused here, as if to underscore that this role was somehow more powerful than the rank of any lawman, then said, “Now, either bring me to my daughter or bring me to her lawyer.”

“No.” Toland took a half step back, his hand drifting to the knot in his tie.

I braced for conflict, but Grandfather Cody merely nodded mildly as if Toland’s response were both expected and reasonable. He tilted his head and gazed at the ceiling, stroking his mustache idly with one hand, his manner that of a man straining to recall a story.

“There’s a United States senator by the name of Sherman Minton,” he said. “My late wife, she wrote a few checks to his campaign. Way I hear it on the radio, Mr. Minton has given some real stem-winder speeches of late that have pleased a man by the name of Roosevelt. I suspect you’ve heard that name, at least? Roosevelt? If not, call Hoover. He’ll fill you in on those fellows. When he has, you can come back and let me know what they’ve been up to.”

“You have some gall, old-timer,” Toland said. “You and your daughter sure do like dropping names and writing letters, don’t you?”

Grandfather Cody was surprised, but he hid it well.

“I suppose you’re entitled to say that. I have gall, and the nation has laws, like it or not. So either you bring me the lawyer that’s in there representing my daughter—because I know she must have requested one by now—or you bring me in to see her. Holding her without access to family or counsel would be a mighty bad look for your agency, and I understand that Hoover cares a great deal about appearances. And, of course, about doing the right thing.”

Toland was a schoolyard bully called on his bluff. He knew it, and we knew it.

“You’ll wait right here while the law enforcement work continues,” he said. “I’d advise you to get comfortable. Could be a while.”

“Sure,” Grandfather Cody said.

Toland left, trembling with anger.

“Don’t sit, Alford,” Grandfather said without looking at me. “It won’t be long.”

It wasn’t.

Maybe three minutes passed before Toland returned with another man, this one taller and broad-shouldered and gray-haired, wearing a badge that identified him as the Hancock County sheriff. Toland’s sour expression suggested that he’d lost whatever battle had briefly been waged behind the door.

“Mr. Cody,” the sheriff said. “I’ve heard of your family, sir.”

“Mixed opinions, I’m sure.” Grandfather offered his big hand, and the sheriff accepted it warmly while Toland glared.

“Not of you and your wife.” He flushed, then added, “I’m sorry for the loss.”

“Thank you.” Grandfather’s tone went soft and his eyes drifted down. It was quick, but it was there, and I thought again of all I did not know or understand about losing a wife of forty years.

“My daughter doesn’t have her mother’s judgment,” Grandfather said. “Trust me, I’m aware. She is no criminal, though. Not in a league with Al Brady and those boys.”

“We’ll tell the prosecutor our opinion,” Toland said. “We don’t need you to tell us a damn thing.”

Grandfather Cody ignored him. “Of course, if you need to keep her for questioning,” he told the sheriff, “that’s your right and responsibility and I’ll respect it. It’s my right and responsibility to see that she has a lawyer if needed. That’s all I’m after, sir.”

“I understand. If she does, she can tell you. Come on back.”

“Thank you.”

All of this was fascinating to me. I viewed my grandfather as a wonderful man but a common one, and yet somehow he wielded power over the G-man. Who was it he’d spoken of earlier besides President Roosevelt? Minton. Yes. He had mentioned a senator and my grandmother exchanging letters. Then there’d been Toland’s reference to my mother being a name-dropper. It made no sense to me. We were a farm family; Grandfather Cody had said as much to Toland.

The sheriff held the door, Toland sighing with disgust, and Grandfather motioned me forward.

“The child can wait here,” the sheriff said.

“He’s her child. I suspect she’d like to see him.”

The sheriff seemed rattled by this disclosure, and the respect with which he’d greeted my grandfather dissipated a bit when he glanced at me, but he did not object.

We went down a short hallway, closed doors on the left, stairs to the right, and a jail cell dead ahead. I stopped in my tracks, staring at the bars, while the sheriff turned left, toward one of the closed doors. They all noticed my absence at the same time and looked back.

“It’s all right,” Grandfather said. “She’s not in there.”

“This time,” Toland muttered.

“Was… was he?” I asked.

Toland said, “Your father was held upstairs, boy, sequestered under the special guard granted only for murderers who kill police officers and kidnap women and rob banks.”

It was the first time Toland had addressed me directly, and it would be the last. Grandfather drew up in front of him, towering over the smaller man by nearly a foot in height and what seemed like a foot in breadth through the chest, then he leaned down and said something in a voice too soft for me to hear but audible to Toland and the sheriff. I could see Toland’s reddening cheeks and one trembling hand as he adjusted that necktie yet again.

“We’ll go on without you, Agent,” the sheriff said. “Go get some coffee.” He too looked rattled by whatever words my grandfather had whispered. Toland seemed keenly aware of the wall at his back. There was nowhere for him to go, and he had no ally.

“It’s our jurisdiction,” he said. “Don’t you forget it. This hick town is an embarrassment.”

“Go guard the coffee,” the sheriff said. “And remember whose idea it was to publicize this whole damn thing.”

“I’ll be calling Chicago.”

“I hope so,” Grandfather said. “Put a call in to Washington, while you’re at it. Ask them what they remember about Little Bohemia.”

“You think that’s funny?”

“No. I didn’t then either.”

Toland decided he’d had enough—a choice that seemed more rooted in whatever had been whispered to him than anything said aloud—and with a contemptuous sneer, he walked off. The lobby door opened and closed with a slam.

“That’s the best assistance they can provide?” Grandfather asked.

“Most are better,” the sheriff said. “He’s embarrassed. Hell, we all are.”

“I understand. Sounds like you were outgunned, though. There’s nothing easy about that.”

The sheriff looked positively grateful. “That’s just it,” he said. “This world is burning up and we’re supposed to keep it in check with pistols and paltry wages. I’ve got good men, Mr. Cody, I truly do, but—”

He stopped as if realizing he was saying too much, and shook his head. “I won’t miss having those two in my jail, that’s the last I’ll say on the matter.”

With that, he opened the door, and we were facing my mother, who sat with her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette and smiling at us as if it were an ordinary day and we were all on the porch rather than in a jail with government agents and machine-gun-bullet holes in the walls.

“Mom always told me a wedding day with a Terhune would be wrathful,” she said. “Still, I didn’t expect this.”

“I’ll give you five minutes alone,” the sheriff said, speaking to my grandfather, refusing to face my mother directly. I had the sense that she’d unnerved him plenty already. “Longer than that, and I’ll have trouble with Toland and the Bureau, no matter what your connections are.”

“Thank you, sir. You’re a good man and I’m sorry for my family’s role in your troubles.”

“We had no role, Dad,” my mother said. “Don’t go confessing anything on my behalf. I swear, who trained you?”

The sheriff closed the door, and then it was just our family.

Grandfather Cody took a seat. I dropped into the one beside him, which left the two of us facing her across the scarred wooden table like interrogators.

“There will be time enough for questions of your sanity, Savannah,” Grandfather said, “although I doubt the Lord has granted me enough days on this earth for you to answer those questions to my satisfaction. We’ll have to trust Him to sort all that out. Meanwhile, I need to know what you’ve done and what you’ve said. I’ll relay it to Douglass Prescott.”

“Prescott?” My mother brightened, then winked at me. “Alford, your grandfather isn’t going to spare any expense in my defense. Let that go to show you that he loves me still.”

“What have you said to the police and FBI?” Grandfather demanded before I had the chance to respond.

My mother stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the table, her smile fading. For the first time, she looked weary.

“Not a thing that you couldn’t have told them, because there’s simply nothing to tell. They don’t believe that, of course. I hadn’t seen Eddie in… years.” She saw my grandfather observe that hesitation, then rushed on. “Anyhow, I hadn’t had contact with him until he was right here in the jail, and they brought him into this very room to meet me, and the man proposed. I was shocked, as you can imagine.”

“I surely can,” Grandfather said dryly. “You were rendered speechless, no doubt.”

“I was! But he made some sense, Dad, what with the perdition awaiting him and his guilt about his absence in Alford’s life.”

I stared at her, trying to imagine my father, the ghost made real by Wanted posters, sitting in this room, mentioning my name.

“That’s what he said?” Grandfather asked doubtfully.

“Well, it was his point, by and large, and the man has always been in love with me. You put yourself in his shoes, facing a certain death, and what last wish would you imagine him to have? He wanted marriage. I won’t pretend for a moment that there might not have been a wily touch to the whole thing, considering our family is better positioned than his to aid with his defense, but I do believe his interest was largely romantic.”

“How long have you been in here?”

“What time is it?”

“Nearly noon.”

“Seven hours, then. I was at a motel when the shooting started. I went out to the street with the others, and no one was clear on exactly what had happened, but I…” She paused. “Well, I thought it made sense to pack.”

“You ran for it?” Grandfather was exasperated.

“Ran?” my mother retorted. “I’d nothing to run from! It just felt likely that my wedding day had been disrupted, and I was, as you might imagine if you cared to think about it, Dad, in an emotional state.”

“I’ve long ago abandoned hope of imagining your emotional states, Savannah.”

“Well, I was positively flustered.” She lifted a fresh cigarette to her lips, and I thought it was to hide a hint of a smile. Her eyes found me and somehow her signature wink seemed to be transmitted telepathically. I looked away. She hadn’t seen Grandfather Cody out there in the lobby. He was angry.

“The police think you were running. That means they think you were part of it.”

“Foolish thoughts from foolish men.”

“I won’t argue their foolishness, but you damn well better understand their power.”

“They’re talking in pointless circles,” my mother said, exhaling smoke. “A thousand questions that boil down to one: Have I spoken to Al Brady? The answer is no.”

“That’s the answer,” Grandfather said. “What’s the truth?”

Her eyes sparked and she leaned across the table with a fast, furious motion, like a snake’s strike.

“You ask me that? Really, Dad? You?”

Her outrage was so genuine that it seemed to reassure him. He looked at me, then my mother, and his voice deepened when he said, “If there’s any… omission of note, Savannah, Prescott will need to know. I’d love to believe you’d tell it all to me, but I know better. You must tell it all to him.”

“I had no knowledge of Al Brady’s assault plans, and I won’t listen to accusations! You’re no better than that man Toland, who’s been in here all morning threatening me with capital crimes of conspiracy. As for omissions… to my mind, there are none. But to a man like Toland… well, they’re very interested in my communication with Governor McNutt.”

“McNutt.” Grandfather echoed the name with such wonder, it was as if he’d never heard of the man.

“I simply put in a word to his office noting that a jail cell was no place for a wedding, and if he had true faith in his state police, then transport to a respectable, if unusual, ceremony at the courthouse could be easily done.”

My grandfather was silent for so long and stayed so motionless that I wanted to check his pulse. My mother had become fascinated with her fingernails.

“You taunted the former governor,” Grandfather said at last, “in order to arrange the transport of a police-killing gangster.”

“It is an unfortunate circumstance. Hardly the conspiracy Agent Toland wants to find, though. Again, I had no knowledge of Brady’s plans and no intention of doing anything but having a respectable wedding.”

“Respectable,” Grandfather said.

“That’s right. And I did not taunt the former governor. I simply… well, I made my case, and then I mentioned the unfortunate business with Dillinger.”

“What business was that?”

“McNutt was responsible for getting Dillinger out of Michigan City before he became public enemy number one. He even submitted a false record of Dillinger’s prison activities, although he claims he didn’t know it was inaccurate.”

Grandfather Cody seemed to sway a little on his chair.

“All right,” he said, and his tone had become so mild and reasonable that I was even more afraid of him. “So you didn’t taunt the former governor. You threatened him.”

“Hardly. I reminded him of the truth.” She ashed her cigarette. “Which includes, of course, his key donors.”

I looked at Grandfather Cody. He was gazing at the wall in the way he looked at a sunset over the river from our porch. His smile was beatific, as my grandmother would have put it.

“I look forward to reading the letters,” he said. “You always did have a way with words.”

My mother smiled with modesty. “Inherited gifts.”

Grandfather Cody kept staring at the wall. “I’ll call Prescott, and I’ll get us a hotel room. We’ll have ourselves a proper family supper.”

Each word was spoken as if he were new to the language and working his way through it with great caution.

“Thank you,” my mother said.

“Thank your mother,” he replied, rising with a scrape of the wooden chair on the stone floor. “She’s the one who convinced me that you were my burden.”

He opened the door without another word. I looked back, uncertain, and my mother winked and waved.

“See you soon, hon. It will all be fine.”

“Sure. Uh… bye.”

I followed my grandfather into the hall. He left the jail at a brisk walk, barely slowing to thank the sheriff and ignoring Toland entirely in the lobby. When we were outside, back in the bright sunlight, he walked at an angle across the courthouse lawn to avoid the press, and I had to struggle to keep up.

“How do you know all these people?” I half gasped as I chased him across the square.

“What people?”

“The senator and the lawyer and the former governor.”

He took a few steps without speaking before he said, “You can thank the Reverend General for all that, Alford. It’s a conversation we’re due to have in time, but let the questions rest for a day, would you? I’ve got calls to make.”

I had no idea how to take that response. The Reverend General had been dead for decades. He couldn’t possibly have known all the players I’d just heard referenced. I looked back at the jail, eyeing the pocked stone where the bullets had taken their bites, and had the rising sense that my father was far from the only ghost in my family.

He was just the one I understood.

24

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: After Officer Minneman’s murder, you didn’t see Eddie again until you planned your ill-advised wedding?

You know that’s not true. I saw him again. But I never stayed with him. We weren’t together, not after that.

Toland: What happened after the murder?

I had to drive the car away from the church. I mean, it was either that or wait for the police to arrive and find their dead comrades and me sitting there in the Studebaker, alone with the blood and bullets. Not a great scenario. Eddie got in the car with me, and Brady and Dalhover got in the Ford, just as we’d planned, only now nothing was as we’d planned. It was supposed to be the end for Eddie in that world.

It was the beginning, really. Nothing that led up to that moment had prepared us for anything that came after it, let alone how fast it would happen. They went from small-town thieves to public enemies in a hurry when you look back on it and do the math.

The first ten miles, neither of us said a word. Eddie was holding the gun and looking out the window and I was driving and trying to see the road, but my mind kept going back to that police car, the way it rolled all the way up to the church. I kept seeing that second officer, the deputy, staggering for the corn even while bullet holes opened up in his chest. Seeing how Eddie had kicked his boot the way Eddie’s daddy used to kick a dog.

Finally, Eddie told me to slow down, said I was driving too fast. That was the first thing he said. First thing either of us said.

I drove to Franklin, Indiana. Pretty little town in Johnson County. There was a hotel on Main Street called the Willard. I knew it from my waitressing days. Eddie gave me some of the cash from the bank robbery and I went in and paid for a room and then we got the suitcases out and walked in as if everything were normal. I felt numb, hollowed out. I don’t know what he was feeling. He never spoke much as a rule—I tended to handle the conversation—but it had never been that quiet between us. We were sleepwalking all the way into the hotel room.

Once we were in the room and the door was closed, I sat down on the bed and started to shake. It was only my hands for a few seconds, then my whole body. I just shook and trembled. Eddie went to put his arms around me, and I slapped him. Hard. I was crying by then. He went over to the window and stood looking out at the street and then he said, “I guess we’re not going to Maine.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. I’ll never forget the way he said it, with so much sorrow in his voice. It was the way you speak when something can’t be undone.

I told him, no, we damn well would not be going to Maine. I asked what he was planning to do. He said find Brady and Dalhover and figure something out. There was never any discussion of whether I’d go along. Like I said, he knew it was done between us. I’d like to give myself all the credit for that but I think he deserves some too: He didn’t want me to have to see things like I’d just seen.

Toland: He also seemed to know you weren’t going to turn him in?

That’s right.

Toland: You watched two men, two law officers, gunned down in front of you and you never thought about picking up the phone and calling the police?

I never did. You think I’m sitting where I am today because of good choices? At least I can admit a mistake. But it didn’t feel like an option that day in Franklin. I didn’t want Eddie to die in the electric chair. Ironic, considering the circumstances now, I realize, but back then, I just wanted him to get away and stay away. And I’ll answer your next question before you ask it: Yes, I understood that I would likely go to prison too. I might not have participated in the robbery or done any of the shooting, but I saw what I saw, and I drove one of the robbers to safety. I didn’t call the police. I was a collaborator, you might say.

Toland: Yes, we did say that. So did the prosecutor and the jury.

Well, there you go. I had enough survival instinct not to want to rush into your arms at that point.

Toland: How long did you stay in Franklin?

I stayed for a week. Eddie left the next morning. We hardly spoke. At dinnertime, we went down to the dining room. I felt like everyone was watching, like everyone knew. I couldn’t order, couldn’t eat. I was different than I am now.

Toland: What do you mean by that?

That was my first day of infamy. Until then, only a handful of people in a small town knew about my “wayward ways,” as my mother always put it. Bad choices are easy to make when you’re anonymous. But that day at the church, when the machine gun blew apart that police car, it changed everything. I’d been bold before. I learned to be bold again. That day was a watershed moment. It was the first time I understood that the whole country was going to know my name.

Toland: You sure seem to enjoy it.

I’ve not been ashamed of it, that’s all. There’s a lot of space between looking people in the eye and saying who you are without shame and enjoying the experience, Agent Toland. I’m sure you love to say your own name—at least if you get to say Agent first. Puts the world on notice of who you are and what you do and how righteous you are.

I’ve got no qualms about looking anyone in the eye and saying I’m Savannah Cody, the lover of Eddie Terhune, mother of his son, Alford. That’s my life. I won’t shy away from it.

Toland: You use a lot of aliases for a woman of such pride. Did you give your name to the hotel clerk that night in Franklin?

That is the dumbest question a man in your position could ask. Of course not. I don’t remember what name I gave—Dolores, maybe; I was using that one a lot back then—but I surely wasn’t going to give my own name. If we did get caught, you all were going to have to earn it. Took you a while, didn’t it?

See, I can still make you flush.

Toland: Get back to the point, Miss Cody. What happened after Franklin?

Eddie could see I was struggling, so he told the waiter I was feeling ill, and we left the dining room. We went back upstairs and he put on the radio and we listened to all the news reports about how many police were looking for the killers. They had named Al Brady as a suspect by then but they didn’t have Eddie yet. That took a day or two. I asked him where he was going, and he said Baltimore. He asked if he could take the car. I almost laughed at that. He seemed like himself again, the way he said it, so shyly. I said I didn’t have any desire to be driving around in a killer’s car, so he was welcome to it.

He didn’t say anything to that.

I turned off the light and went to bed. He sat at the desk for a long time with the lamp on, looking at the maps, the way he always did. Trying to find a way out of his own life. The maps don’t let you go back in time, that’s the trouble, so Eddie had nothing left to do but plot a route to Baltimore.

I guess he picked a good one, because you didn’t catch him there. Didn’t catch any of them.

Sometime around midnight, he turned off the lamp and got in bed. He moved so carefully, trying not to wake me, but of course I wasn’t asleep. Who could sleep after a day like that? I kept seeing the car rolling through the blood and the dust and hearing that soft popping sound it made when it finally hit the church. That sound was quieter than all the bullets had been, but it was the one that stood out.

The window was open and the breeze was coming in and the hotel room smelled like spring. Starlight and soft wind and Eddie and me, side by side, the way it began, so pure.

I was thinking about killing him when he reached back and squeezed my hand. That was all he did, held my hand like a schoolboy, but it fractured me. I knew it would be the last time, and I hated him for that, and I hated myself even more, but him I could still love, a little. Him, I could forgive.

I’ve never made love like that in my life. Not before, not since. It was angry, it was obsessive, it was rough, it was sweet. We made love like a heartbreak; that’s the only way to describe it. Passion and pain. Broke the headboard first and then the mirror on the bureau. Eddie said that was seven years of bad luck and I started laughing, even with him on top of me and behind me, even as out of breath as I was, I was laughing, and it took me a while to realize I was also crying.

We were done then. I didn’t think he knew I was crying. Then he reached out and wiped my tears away, first one eye, then the other.

Last thing he said was “Savannah, I’m sorry.”

I didn’t say anything. I just squeezed his hand in the dark the way he’d squeezed mine.

When I woke up, the sun was in my eyes, and Eddie was gone.

25

NICKEL

THEY WERE ONE night in Kentucky and two in Ohio before arriving in Moundsville, West Virginia, where they finally found safe beds after spending the previous nights in the car. Nickel was always awake those nights, each sound carrying the promise of police. In Moundsville, they stayed at a riverside campground called Grubb Hollow, and the old-timer who took their money and sent them to their cabins, which were little more than tar-paper shacks set back in the pines, seemed more concerned that they were police than that the police might be looking for them. Dalhover had heard of the campground from someone who’d done time at the state prison nearby.

They laid low. Slept late, stayed close to the cabin. Afternoons and evenings, they drank piss-water beer and listened to the radio, smirking at the quotes from J. Edgar Hoover promising to turn “Al Brady and his hoodlums” into the FBI’s next success story.

“The day of the gangster is done in America,” Hoover announced.

“Like hell,” Brady retorted.

The media was making a fuss about Savannah Cody, and Hoover said that the Bureau was looking into the possibility of her involvement in the jailbreak. This entertained the others, and Nickel tried to grin his way through it, but in truth it vexed him. It wasn’t right if she was being pressured. Dalhover reminded Nickel that Savannah had put herself in the bear trap, and he wasn’t wrong about that, but she was nobody’s coconspirator.

“I gotta be honest, not sure I could’ve pulled it off without the silly bitch’s help,” Al Brady said, laughing over a cigar, and Nickel felt a flush of anger, was grateful when Clarence piped up and said what about his help, damn it, he’d come in shooting, hadn’t he? It distracted them from Nickel’s response. Al Brady was a keen observer and Nickel doubted he’d have missed the anger, and he knew nothing good would’ve come of it.

Besides, what did he have to be upset about? Savannah had been using him; she’d said it plainly. She was less loyal than these boys.

Still, it was hard to listen to. Nickel found excuses to get away from the radio. He cleaned the weapons, spending extra time on the Thompson, which Brady had nearly ruined. You had to care for the thing; take it for granted in the weeks before you needed it, and you shouldn’t be disappointed when it failed. Nickel was gratified to see with his eyes what his ears had told him back in Hancock County: The gun had been misfiring because of poor maintenance. There was soot-colored carbon buildup in the bolt assembly and a grit-lined firing pin. A recoil spring that had all the energy of an old dog. It couldn’t chase the bolt even if it wanted to, and that meant the gun had been short-cycling, still trying to shoot and occasionally managing it, but it was not what it had once been.

What it could be again. Nickel set to work with rags and oil and told Brady they’d need to pick up another spring.

“It shot fine for me back in Indiana,” Al said.

Nickel didn’t bother disagreeing.

When the guns were cleaned and tuned and oiled, he turned his attention to the Oldsmobile. There wasn’t much work to be done on it. The car was in splendid shape—too good. Nobody who could afford a ride like that would stay in a campground like Grubb Hollow. Nickel stole a West Virginia license plate, but still the big gleaming black beauty drew the eye. He parked it as deep in the pines as possible and familiarized himself with the engine while Dalhover cooked sausages and burgers on a charcoal grill.

The Olds had a mighty V-8 engine with a radiator the size of a washtub. Wiping it down with rags and topping off the fluid, Nickel found himself thinking about the pot stills his father used to make in the hills near the Ohio River. He used worm coils made out of copper wire wrapped carefully around thin saplings to hold a tight, snakelike posture and then lowered into a shaded barrel—oak, always oak—where the mash vapor hit the copper, cooled, condensed, turned back into liquid, and dripped down into the barrel.

Everything Nickel knew about cars—and he knew plenty—he’d learned from disassembling old wrecks to make pot stills. His father had been a gifted mechanic, but he’d never understood the machines in the way Nickel did. He could see them but not communicate with them. When you got down to it, when you listened, you realized there was no difference between a car’s engine and a pot still. Flow and fire, pressure and combustion, working best when all parts were in balance, harmonized.

There was no work needed on the Olds, but still Nickel took it apart and put it back together, his way of thanking the vehicle for making the run it had on his getaway.

By the third day in West Virginia, Brady and Dalhover and Shaffer were getting anxious. They left the campground to buy booze and food at a service station that was uncomfortably close to the prison. Nickel bought road maps, so many that Brady and Dalhover and Shaffer mocked him, asked him did he think the roads in a Shell-branded map were different than the roads in a Rand McNally, but the truth was that sometimes they were different. The Civilian Conservation Corps and the federal highway administration had been busy in the 1930s, and new stretches of asphalt were not hard to find. Nickel was more interested in the older gravel tracks, though—forgotten dirt lanes and timber roads, slash cuts for closed coal mines, that sort of thing.

Beyond that, well, he just liked maps. There was a notion of possibility that came to you when you were looking at a map that could dim your reality for a time. With so many different paths, you could make believe any one of them was an option, and down different roads were different results.

“You remember Little Bohemia,” he said, because everyone did. “Dillinger, he always knew the map better than the rest.”

Brady stopped teasing him then.

“Pick out a good route east,” Brady said. “To Baltimore, maybe.”

Baltimore sounded terrible. Nickel liked the campground in Moundsville because at night the air smelled of the river.

“We should stay here longer,” he said. “Let the heat die down.”

But they couldn’t, because on the fourth night in West Virginia, Clarence got so drunk and so loud that Brady worried someone in the next cabin over would figure out who they were. Talk turned to killing the other campers, and at that point Nickel said the hell with it, let’s just get on the road, and so they did. He drove them through the night and by dawn they were in New Jersey, smog in the air, cities up ahead. He hated the East Coast and said as much.

“Too crowded. All these people looking for us, and we go right toward them?”

“Crowds are better,” Brady said. “Out in the sticks, people notice you. All those country crackers remember a stranger’s face. Here, we blend in.”

Those country crackers. Like Brady wasn’t one of them.

They couldn’t risk driving the Olds much longer, and Nickel volunteered to steal the next car. Seemed like the least he could do, considering Brady and Shaffer had shot him out of jail. Some days, he found himself wishing they’d left him there, thinking it might’ve been nice to get married and write letters to his boy and see what Savannah might’ve been able to do about getting him an early parole, but then he’d remember how long a single year in Michigan City felt, and he’d roll down the window and let the summer air push hard into his face and take deep breaths. A breath was a hell of a thing. You’d run out of them in time, and most folks scarcely appreciated any of the ones they’d taken along the way.

Michigan City taught you something about appreciating fresh air, that was for sure.

“We’ll go together,” Dalhover said about the car theft. “Nickel and me’ll ride back in the hot car, and Al and Clarence can follow in the Olds in case there’s any trouble.”

“There won’t be any trouble,” Nickel said. They were sitting in the dimly lit room of a motor court just outside of Baltimore, and Brady was eager for a taste of a big-city hotel.

“You’re just going to, what, walk down the street and pick a parked car?” Dalhover asked Nickel, frowning.

“Yes,” Nickel said. “I’ll drive it back here, then we’ll move on. Could go north. Maine.”

He suggested it simply because it was the place he’d dreamed of reaching with Savannah. What he hadn’t expected was the way Al Brady’s eyes brightened at the prospect.

“Maine,” Brady said like he was tasting it. “You know, that’s not the worst idea you’ve had, Nickel.”

“What the hell is in Maine?” Shaffer grumbled. He preferred the city scene, same as Brady.

“Nothing,” Nickel said. “That’s the point. Thing about hiding out, it’s—”

But Al cut him off before he could wax eloquent about the deep forests and isolated lakes. “It’s a hunter’s paradise, and where there are hunters, there are guns. Also, since it’s so far from anyplace we’ve bought guns before, there’s less risk.”

“That’s what Dillinger said about Wisconsin,” Dalhover put in, but Brady waved him off.

“You got real cities in Wisconsin. Milwaukee, Chicago.”

“Chicago’s in Illinois.”

“You think I don’t know that, you dumb son of a bitch? Point is, the general vicinity. Either way, Dillinger’s dead and I don’t need to take his advice.”

“Who said advice? I was arguing he made a mistake, going up there in the woods!”

“Where’d they get him?” Nickel said. “Not in the woods. Downtown Chicago.”

“You’re all missing the fucking point,” Brady said. “Money and guns. That’s the point.”

“Got to get the money to get the guns,” Nickel said, trying to keep the momentum going, which kept him from mentioning that they already had a machine gun, rifles, and pistols. “That starts with the car.”

They broke up the planning session, such as it was, without a clear decision on Maine, drove Nickel to a neighborhood three miles from the motor court, and dropped him off in the darkness beneath a burned-out streetlamp.

“I’d go back and look at that Mercury,” Brady advised, jerking his thumb at a car in a driveway a block behind them.

“I’ll pick a winner,” Nickel said. “Go on, now, before the neighbors see you sitting here, idling.”

They left. Nickel walked with his hands in his pockets and an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. His leg felt better, still a dull ache with each footfall but not the kind of pain that threatened to steal his breath. It felt good, being out here alone without the others and all their talk, their plans and boasting and belching and general bullshit. Felt so good, in fact, that he walked farther than he’d planned and only belatedly realized how fast the neighborhood was changing. There were Black men sitting on a stoop, passing a bottle and laughing, and the laughs stopped when they saw him. Damn it. Now he’d been noticed, and the whole point was not to stand out. But how was he supposed to know that the neighborhood would go from white to Black so fast? That was the thing with a city. Everyone had their own blocks—Blacks, Italians, Polish, Irish, whatever—and you crossed invisible lines without knowing it. Give him the country any day, where there were fences to mark your trespass.

He carried on as if he belonged there, then turned left at the next block and picked up his pace, checking over his shoulder once to see if he was being pursued. They hadn’t chased after him, but their laughter was gone, and he knew they were probably wondering about him. Shit. Another left at the next block, heading back the way he’d come, past tall houses crammed tight on neat, narrow lots. The wind was in his face now, and he could smell a hint of salt in it, the Chesapeake Bay out there somewhere, ships that could carry him across the globe to a place where no man alive had heard of Nickel Terhune.

Like road maps, the sea could always threaten to undo him with hope.

He found a Ford Model 18 with a V-8 and good tires. Doors were locked, but he’d taken a thin piece of metal flashing from the motel room’s doorframe and now he slid it out of his jacket, fed it between the weather stripping and the window, and hooked the latch. Popped it. All this he did without ever taking his eyes off the street. Once he was inside, it was even faster. He found the ignition wires under the dash, twisted the battery feed to the ignition with swift, nimble fingers, then hit the starter with his foot. A pause, just long enough to make him wonder if he’d picked a lemon, and then the motor caught and growled like a dog shaking itself awake in the night.

No one came out of the house. Nickel put it in gear and rolled for a block in darkness before engaging the headlights and painting the pavement with pale light. For a moment, he was alone, and the road ahead was empty. The boys were back at the motor court, no doubt drinking and checking their watches, wondering at the delay, maybe making plans to take off without him in case he’d gotten caught. Hell, he could do the same. He could go to Maine without them. Drive through the night north by northeast, with the window down and the sea breeze strong in his nose, listening for bell buoys. Could probably be in New Hampshire by dawn.

They had come back for him when he was locked up in a cell, though. That made the decision easy enough. Southwest instead of northeast, back to the motel, where the other three busted his balls over how long he’d taken, then toasted their new stolen car with a bottle of Canadian whiskey that didn’t taste half as good as the whiskey his son of a bitch of a father had made.

The three were in high good humor now, playing cards and talking about whores, and Nickel got drunk fast even while he complained about the liquor because being drunk kept the memory of the open road away, the turns not taken. In the last minutes of consciousness, after his eyes were closed but before sleep took him, it occurred to him that his father had come back for him, too, that long-ago summer in the Kankakee Marsh.

Maybe coming back wasn’t such a virtue.

26

ALFORD

OUR ONE-NIGHT STAY in Hancock County turned into a week while Grandfather Cody worked with the lawyers and FBI to show my mother was cooperating. Her lawyer, Douglass Prescott, wasn’t optimistic that the Bureau would be easily persuaded.

“They’re not bluffing,” he told us. “And that man Hoover is the last person in the whole country I’d want to pick a fight with. He doesn’t like being embarrassed. Your daughter seems to have embarrassed him.”

“I didn’t do a thing,” my mother said.

We were sitting in Prescott’s office in Indianapolis, on the tenth floor of a building on Monument Circle. Through the window behind him, I could see the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, a limestone spire that reached far above the building. At its base were bronze statues of various Hoosier war heroes: George Rogers Clark, William Henry Harrison, and, yes, the Reverend General Jacob Winter.

“Dad keeps repeating the point I’ve made since the first interview with these silly men,” my mother said. “I committed no crime, and their harassment of me will be of no help to them in capturing the criminals who have so embarrassed them.”

“That’s not their stance,” Prescott told her. He was a tall, lean man who wore suits cut perfectly for his frame, and on a few occasions his eyes seemed to linger on my mother, but then they returned to my grandfather, which provoked a flush in the lawyer. Now he gazed from my grandfather to my mother and said, “They’re reminding me of what happened to Kathryn Kelly, Miss Cody.”

“Who is Kathryn Kelly?”

“The gangster’s wife,” Grandfather Cody said. “Machine Gun Kelly’s wife.”

“That’s right,” Prescott said. “The cops viewed her as the brains of the operation. She was given a life sentence, same as him, not for firing a gun but for orchestrating his crimes, including the Urschel kidnapping. He was the big Oklahoma oilman they held for ransom.”

My mother waved this off as if the comparison were absurd, but Grandfather Cody’s face darkened.

“You can’t be serious. That woman was with her husband every step of the way. Savannah’s only contact with Terhune came in supervised visits in jail!”

“The only contact with Terhune, yes. With Brady and Clarence Shaffer, though?”

“I haven’t seen them!”

“The FBI contends otherwise.”

“They need to prove it, though,” Grandfather Cody said.

“Ultimately, sure. But they can do that—or fail to—at trial.”

Grandfather Cody stared at him. “You believe they’ll go that far?”

“If they can come up with any evidence—and I mean anything, no matter how trivial or weak—I see Toland pressing charges simply to make an example of Miss Cody. They want her to be seen as a warning to the American public.”

“A warning!” my mother scoffed. “A warning of what, the risk of being innocent in a country gone mad for retribution?”

“Association with undesirable actors,” Prescott said. “It’s that simple. They don’t trust you, and they do not believe your story about the wedding and the coincidental timing it played with the jailbreak. They can’t prove you had any knowledge of it—”

“Because I didn’t!”

“But they intend to,” he finished. “I’m making my arguments, of course. It’s crucial that your family be seen as cooperative.”

“I’ve done all the cooperating I can,” my mother said.

“Well, keep doing it.” He turned in his chair and looked out the window as if the Soldiers and Sailors Monument had suddenly captured his attention.

Grandfather Cody was tugging at the crooked end of his mustache and staring at Prescott.

“You ever think of running for office?” he said.

Prescott turned back, surprised. “I have plenty of responsibilities to occupy my time.”

“Complicated answer for a simple question.”

Now Prescott cocked his head, and for the first time I saw the shrewdness in his eyes, the quality that Grandfather Cody had already picked up on.

“I keep an open mind. Why does it interest you?”

“Because a politically ambitious man might want to keep J. Edgar Hoover happy.”

“Are you questioning my ethics?”

“No, sir. Thinking of the peril that defending my daughter puts you in.”

Prescott didn’t buy that for a minute. He gazed at Grandfather Cody and said, “I’m the best in the city.”

“That’s what I like to hear. And remember as you keep that open mind that every candidate needs backers. Washington forgets about Indianapolis fast; Hoosiers don’t.”

“Interesting point,” Prescott said with a tight smile. “While we’re speaking philosophically, let me make a point of my own. Using political leverage is not always prudent. Your daughter’s communication with our former governor, for example. There’s been some talk of it being extortion.”

“Extortion!” My mother lifted her hands, threw back her head, and laughed. “Paul McNutt is a politician. His entire life is about leverage.”

“It’s still an unfortunate look,” Prescott said, and I could tell from Grandfather Cody’s expression that he agreed.

“What about locating witnesses who can testify that she had no communication with Brady about the jailbreak?”

“I don’t know who could offer that beyond Brady and Shaffer themselves.”

Grandfather Cody gazed at Prescott thoughtfully. “You’re right,” he said. “It would require finding those men, wouldn’t it?”

On the drive back to Greenfield, my mother smoked, and my grandfather turned off the radio each time she turned it on. Eventually, she gave up, put the window down, and sang. She had a beautiful voice. I asked the name of the song.

“ ‘Pennies from Heaven,’ ” she answered brightly. “Isn’t it lovely?”

“Which dance hall did you hear that one in?” Grandfather Cody said.

“You don’t have to speak for her, Dad. I know the lines well enough.”

She meant my grandmother, and her observation was not wrong. Grandfather Cody had begun to speak more like her, as if filling a void, unaware that he was creating one. He couldn’t replace her, and by trying, he erased himself.

“Why are we staying here, Dad?” she asked as he was pulling up to the Columbia Hotel in the heart of downtown Greenfield. “What point do you think you’re making to these people?”

“They think you were running,” he said simply, parking directly in front of the hotel, where the Lincoln-Zephyr couldn’t be missed.

“Who cares?”

“They do.”

“Why do you?”

He sighed, tugged at his mustache, and said, “I was with Burns in Colorado in 1913. Group of coal workers out there figured me for a spy, a strikebreaker. They told me to go.” His eyes drifted to the rearview mirror, found mine, and lingered briefly before he looked down again and said, “I didn’t like being told what to do. Decided it was better for me to stay there and let them see me for who I was.”

My mother, who always had a glib response to his stories of the West, didn’t offer one now. She was looking at him with interest.

“What happened?”

“They got to know me. For a while, I thought they had gotten to respect me. For a while longer, I thought I respected myself.” He cut the Lincoln’s engine. “I was gone by the time Ludlow happened. I resigned the next week, but everyone in that camp? It’s hard to believe they thought they were wrong about me.”

He got out of the car. My mother was watching him with sorrow.

“What was Ludlow?” I whispered.

“Hush, Alford,” she said, and we followed my grandfather as he headed for the hotel. He walked tall, shoulders back and head high, and he tipped his cap at everyone. Nobody spoke. Most of them looked past him, at my mother.

At me.

I tried to match his upright posture and politeness and to absorb my mother’s utter indifference. It wasn’t easy. I felt too small and young to match his big man’s calm and too nervous to come anywhere close to my mother’s attitude. I wanted nothing more than to slink up the steps to our rooms, away from the watchers. Grandfather Cody, however, strode through the lobby and into the café. My mother glanced at me, turned her palms up, and followed. The café was a scattering of tables in front of a combined bar and soda fountain. My grandfather walked up to the counter and nodded at my mother, indicating she should order first.

“A Coke,” she said.

The employee behind the counter, a short, slim man in a white-collared shirt open at the neck, looked at her for a long moment, then said, “No more Champagne Velvet, eh?”

It was clear that what she ordered in front of her father and son was not in keeping with what she’d ordered in the days she’d stayed here alone.

“Not today,” she said, seemingly unfazed, but my grandfather spoke up next to her.

“Have the beer, Savannah. Matter of fact, make it two of Terre Haute’s finest, chief. And a Coke for the boy. Think you can keep that order in your memory as well?”

The little man turned toward my grandfather, but his smirk wavered.

“Pays to have a good memory in this business,” he muttered, setting down the Coke.

“It does in most businesses,” Grandfather Cody agreed. “Now, pour the beers.”

I had not seen my grandfather drink in public before, although I was acquainted with the secret hiding place for his whiskey bottles—Terhune bottles, no less. He handed the first beer to my mother, accepted the second, and took a long drink. A third of the glass vanished in a swallow, and when he lowered the glass, his mustache was white with foam. He wiped the foam clear with his index finger, studied it, then licked the finger clean and gave an exaggerated smacking of the lips.

“Not bad.”

He tossed a dollar onto the bar and turned away without another word. My mother caught my eye and gave me that palms-up gesture that told me she didn’t understand his behavior any better than I did. He sat down at a table in the center of the room, and we took our drinks over and sat down with him. Everyone in the place was watching, and he met their eyes one at a time, touching his hat brim at each encounter. Most folks turned away fast when he did that.

“What has gotten into you?” my mother asked.

“You asked about Ludlow,” Grandfather Cody said, speaking to me and ignoring her.

“Yes, sir.”

“It was a town in Colorado. Little more than a camp when I was there. Coal mining. United Mine Workers of America moved in, tried to organize the folks. Fair wages and better conditions. Nothing unreasonable. But enough to hit the profit ledgers. I was there in the summer of 1913, when the coal miners were still in what was called ‘the company town.’ Not fancy digs, but not terrible. Four walls and a ceiling. There were hotels and stores and doctors there, but the miners, they could use only some of the stores and doctors. Company-approved ones.”

He drank more of the beer. This time, he forgot to wipe the foam from his mustache. His eyes had gone distant.

“They went on strike in September, a few weeks after I left. The company evicted them from their houses, and they ended up in tents outside of town. They set up near the canyons leading to the mines so as to discourage any enterprising strikebreakers the company might send in to replace them. I’d been there for Burns, reporting on the way things were trending, the major players, that kind of thing. Well, Burns was replaced on the job. Maybe because of me, maybe not. An outfit of so-called detectives known as Baldwin-Felts came on instead.”

He stopped, snorted, and shook his head. The beer foam flecks flew.

“Detectives. Sure. What they were was private soldiers. They brought in giant searchlights to light the camp up at all hours, keep folks from getting sleep. Took some shots through tent walls. Then came the death car.”

“The death car?”

“An armored sedan, all steel, with a machine gun mounted on it. This was supposed to quell the unrest. No better way to calm folks down than by showing up with machine guns. Ask around this fine town and see how well that works.”

He drank again. My mother was watching him. Everyone else in the café was listening but pretending not to.

“In April, one of the so-called detectives, or maybe a National Guardsman, I’m not sure anyone ever knew, shot and killed a boy younger than you. That didn’t do much for calm. Shots started flying on both sides. Down in the camp, there were more children and of course their mothers. They dug pits under the tents, trying to stay safe. That worked until the tents were set on fire.”

I hadn’t taken a sip of my Coke. The bottle was cool against my palm, but my heartbeat was hot and fast.

“Two women and nine children suffocated in dirt pits under tents set on fire by men armed with machine guns,” Grandfather Cody said. “That was the way it all sorted out. Dead women and children in dirt pits, while men in bank buildings haggled over their ledgers.”

He turned the beer glass around and around. A single fleck of white foam clung to his mustache. He gazed around the room. No one met his eyes.

“There are plenty of men in this world who deserve to die for their sins,” he said. “We know some of their names. My greatest fear is that we don’t know the ones who deserve it the most. It doesn’t excuse the frontline fools, make no mistake. But they aren’t the only sinners America has produced, I can promise you that.”

He finished the beer. My mother hadn’t touched hers. She was now watching him with a surprising tenderness.

“Anyhow,” he said, pushing the empty glass aside. “That was Ludlow, Colorado, in the months after I left town. Many nights, I’ve wondered what I might’ve done if they’d kept me there. If Baldwin-Felts hadn’t arrived to finish the job. I know what I like to believe… but the thing about telling people what you would have done if circumstances had put you in a certain time and place, Alford, is that it’s just talk. You don’t know what you would’ve done in another’s man’s skin on another day in another town. You simply don’t.”

“That’s why you quit?” my mother asked.

“It’s a reason,” Grandfather Cody said. “There were others. Your mother. Home.”

We all sat in silence for a long time. Eventually, he said, “Drink your soda pop, Alford. And, Savannah, I never expected to instruct you to drink a beer.”

She smiled. “It is a first, isn’t it?”

“Go on, then.”

She drank the beer with more relish than I had for the Coke. I was thinking of the two of us in a pit in the dirt, flames and smoke overhead, gunfire shredding canvas tents.

“I don’t hate these FBI agents,” Grandfather Cody said, his voice rising again, impossible not to hear in the room. “Why, I don’t even mind the two of them sitting here in this hotel pretending to be salesmen. They’re doing a job. I’m just disappointed for everyone involved that they haven’t gotten it done yet.”

With that, he rose and walked toward the elevator. I started to follow, but my mother put a cool hand on my arm.

“Let him go, Alford. He needs time to think about her.”

I blinked. “Her?”

“Your grandmother.” She watched Grandfather Cody disappear into the elevator and only when the doors had closed did she turn back to me. She smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes.

“She’ll make the choice for him. Even from the grave, Alford, she’ll make the choice.”

It seemed as good a time as any to ask a question that had been stirring in my mind ever since our arrival in Greenfield and the hostile exchange with Agent Toland.

“Why is she so important to everyone here?”

My mother looked at me with surprise, her dark hair falling across her face as she leaned forward, incredulous.

“You lived with the woman your whole life!”

“I know. But…” I shrugged. “She wrote letters and read books and went to church.”

My mother’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile, at some private amusement.

“She wrote more than letters. She wrote checks.”

“They couldn’t have been big checks, though. I mean, we—they—” I corrected myself, feeling a need to share distance from my grandparents with my mother, although I’d lived in their house my whole life and she scarcely visited it. “They’re not rich.”

She gazed at me for a long moment and then let out a low laugh.

“She really was the best at it, wasn’t she?”

“The best at what?”

“Practicing what she preached. You know all the lessons, Alford; I’m sure she didn’t invent new ones after I was gone. Maybe they just became sterner. What was her favorite word?”

“Modesty,” I said immediately, because, yes, that one was a recurring lesson in my grandmother’s house. Much of Lamentations of the Shenandoah was devoted to the moral imperative of modesty rather than to battlefield action, to my chagrin. The soldiers would go on for pages discussing modesty and occasionally debating their favorite scriptures on the topic. A nice idea, but a bad way to win a war.

“Indeed,” my mother said. “Modesty. Alford, do you have any idea how well her grandfather’s book sold?”

“Not really.”

“In 1910 alone, Sears and Roebuck sold a million copies. Mom was the sole heir at that point. For more than twenty years, she refused to sell the rights for the movie, even though producers offered to buy it again and again. Then she changed her mind.”

“They made a movie?” I was stunned. How on earth had I not heard about this?

“Not yet. But they’ve written scripts. It will happen one of these days, and the production won’t be cheap. That much she guaranteed. She sold the film rights for—” She caught herself, stopped, and gave an odd little laugh that sounded almost like a sob. “Anyhow. The point is, if your grandmother wasn’t the wealthiest woman in the state of Indiana for most of her life, she was one of them. And she was shrewd. There might have been a smarter investor this century, but I’m not sure. J. P. Morgan got the press; Iris Winter got the dividends. Because… modesty.”

She didn’t so much speak the word as sneer it.

“All from that old book?” I said. It seemed impossible.

“It started with that old book. She took it from there. Don’t think she doesn’t deserve credit. She learned more about commodities at the Floyd County library than most bankers ever absorbed on Wall Street. Probably half the men in elected office in this state have written her a thank-you note, and the other half settled for a begging note that didn’t impress her. Yet here you are, twelve years old, and you’ve not the faintest idea of any of it. I knew she’d never slip up, but I thought Dad might have by now. Why, he’s very fond of that line about how your father robs banks while your grandmother is one. You’ve never heard that?”

I had a vague memory of the line, but I’d misinterpreted it. “I thought he meant money was safe with her because she was… you know. Tight.”

My mother’s laugh echoed in the café, so loud that some of the people who’d been pretending to ignore us looked over.

“She wasn’t tight, exactly. Just… particular.” She smiled and finished her beer, lost in thought or memories. “Look, don’t tell your grandfather what I’ve just said. He clearly has a strategy for when to break the news to you. Money corrupts, and I’ll be blamed for enough of your corruption without this exchange added to the ledger. But take heart: You’ll never need to worry about money.”

“Then why do you?” I asked.

Her face darkened, and she tried to hide her eyes by turning to look at the big clock on the wall beside us. It was half past four.

“We should go on up,” she said. “Dad needs some time alone, but not too much. Do us both a favor, Alford, and forget this conversation. Curiosity is natural, but your grandfather won’t see it that way. Not when I was involved.”

She walked away before I could respond.

27

NICKEL

PLAN WAS STEAL the car, hit a bank, head north.

Plan changed fast. Way it could when Al Brady found a woman he liked.

The trouble began at a place called the Carlin’s Park, a massive entertainment complex that featured an Olympic-size swimming pool, carnival rides, a dance pavilion, and, most enticing to Al Brady, a roller-skating rink.

America’s public enemy number one loved his fucking roller skates.

He claimed he liked the roller rinks for the women—and make no mistake, in 1937, women who were interested in meeting rough men were ever present at a skating rink—but the truth was the lithe little bastard just liked twirling around out there with wheels on his feet. Nickel hadn’t understood it, didn’t take the whole thing seriously until the first time he saw Savannah Cody on skates, one leg lifted behind her as the wind blew her hair back.

The newspapers had always made a big deal of John Dillinger being an athlete. Great baseball player, could’ve played in the majors, all that, but what they really got into was describing him hurdling over bank counters like a gymnast. Brady paid attention. He was always measuring himself against his Hoosier predecessor.

So the four of them found themselves at Carlin’s Park, which was the biggest skating arena Nickel had ever seen—waxed maple boards beneath high, arched stone windows that filtered the dying daylight, men in pin-striped suits trying to pretend they weren’t encumbered by the jackets even while they sweated through them, women in shirtdresses and some in sharp blouses and gabardine trousers, everyone responding to the big Wurlitzer organ in the corner, the one that told them whether it was time for a slow waltz of long, graceful, arcing movements or something with wild energy, laughter and shouts and more than a few hard knocks between breathless skaters.

Nickel wouldn’t skate without Savannah, so he wandered out to look at the swimming pool. He should’ve kept a closer eye on Brady and Dalhover and Shaffer, who were evidently making friends—and dinner plans.

Just what they didn’t need.

That was Friday night. Saturday, they went to meet the girls at the Owl Bar in the Belvedere Hotel. Four gangsters who were poorly disguised, at best, three wearing mustaches, two with their blond hair dyed black, Nickel looking just like Nickel, in one of the busiest bars in a busy city not an hour’s drive from the fucking FBI office in Washington.

This was what roller-skating could do to you. Too much motion addled the brain.

They took a streetcar from Roland Park and rode into the city. It was a humid day, lead-colored clouds threatening, so the streetcar operator had the canvas rolled down in preparation for rain, trapping the heat inside—along with Dalhover’s cologne, which was so strong it stung the eyes. Nickel had always hated a streetcar, too many people, but there was something soothing about the soft, swaying ride as they headed south. With the heat, it was almost enough to make him want to close his eyes and doze, but he tried to keep alert, looking every man on the car over, wondering who could be one of Hoover’s agents. He pulled his hat low, shading his face—like that would do anything if there was truly an FBI man on board. The idea of being trapped made him tense, and he pulled back the canvas so he could feel the air on his face. He felt a dull throb where the bullet had bitten into his leg.

Once they were out of Roland Park, the fine Tudor homes faded away and row houses began to emerge, some tucked behind lines draped with laundry. One woman was hustling to get bedsheets down, looking uneasily at those dark clouds. They passed a textile mill, swayed by some red-brick buildings, maybe a college of some sort, and went into the heart of the city, where cobblestones paved the streets. The streetcar let them off at Charles and Chase, and Nickel couldn’t get out fast enough; he stood on the sidewalk wiping his sweating brow and looking up at the tall stone towers that flanked the entrance to the grand hotel, jutting sculptures in all directions, carved lion’s heads and shit like that; made no sense to spend the time or money on that, but when you built a hotel like this, you did it anyhow. It was a grand place, but it still couldn’t touch the West Baden Springs Hotel back in Indiana.

“Best bar on the whole damn Eastern Seaboard, you ask me,” Al Brady said now. “I tell you about the broad who used to own it?”

“What about her?” Dalhover asked.

“Her husband, when he bought the place, turned the whole second floor into their private residence. But this broad, she liked to be naked all the damn time. If you stood out here on the street and watched the windows, you’d see her naked as the day she was born just walking around for the whole city to behold.”

The idea seemed to stimulate him so much that Nickel had a clearer sense of why they’d risked the trek into the city. The girls Al had met at Carlin’s had lit the match.

They went up the wide steps and through the glass revolving doors and into the hotel. It was a glamorous place. Veined marble and towering cathedral ceilings with chandeliers draping down, people dressed to the nines, the place reeking of money like Dalhover reeked of cologne. The Owl Bar was off to the side, a wood-paneled darkened room. Above the door was a stained-glass transom window featuring two owls. Inside, guarding the back bar, were a pair of matching wooden sculptures.

Nickel took a stool, ordered a whiskey, and found himself thinking of the last sketch he’d made on the prison cell wall. His entire saloon could be tucked into one corner of this fancy-ass hotel.

Never going to see it, he thought, and then the whiskey was in hand, and he drank it fast.

“I love this joint,” Shaffer said, and Al Brady snorted.

“Saying it like you been here before.”

“I have! Just wasn’t with you.” Shaffer was always indignant about being the least experienced of the group, and that made him trouble when he was drinking, because he was inclined to brag, and if he got drunk enough, the bragging might intersect with the truth, which wasn’t what you wanted when you were fugitives.

“I know you have, kid,” Nickel said, and clinked his whiskey glass against Clarence’s. “Let’s have another.”

So they did. Another whiskey up, another whiskey down. Brady’s friends from the skating rink showed up, two brunettes and one blonde and one redhead. Nickel thought of the gang’s dwindling supply of cash and the jewels they couldn’t fence and their lame machine gun. There was a pounding in his head that had nothing to do with the liquor. He breathed through his nose like a fighter trying to calm down between rounds and forced himself not to keep eyeing every young guy in a suit.

One of the girls, the redhead, had alabaster skin and a burst of freckles not completely obscured by the powder on her nose. She had a wicked smile that reminded Nickel of Savannah, but the hair reminded him more of the doc’s wife in Indiana, Marilyn Hanchell. He found himself growing stiff against his trousers when the redhead leaned past him for a drink, her breasts grazing his arm.

“Sorry.” She leaned back, slower, taking her time, half dragging her tit against him, and there was no doubt that she would not be a cheap companion. Not looking like that.

“So where are you from?” the redhead asked.

“Maine,” Nickel said, and Brady shot him a warning look.

“I was telling them about how we came from New Orleans,” Al said. “Looking at buying a factory up in Maine.”

“Right,” Nickel said, thinking they should’ve agreed on a backstory before.

“What kind of factory is in Maine?” asked one of the brunettes, a petite, lithe girl. “Sardines?”

Brady grinned. “Hell, we aren’t in the sardine business. There’s trees in Maine, maybe you’ve heard? It’s furniture. Cabinets for nice girls like you to store your wedding china in.”

They all had a laugh at that. They all had another drink. A shrimp cocktail was served, then crab cakes, the best Nickel had tasted in years. The bar was filling, so many voices that he felt lost, the room smoky and loud and dim. The redhead told him her name was Beth, and he told her that his was Leroy, and neither of them gave a shit because they knew it wasn’t the truth.

“Furniture makers, eh?” she asked him.

He didn’t want her fixated on what he did and certainly didn’t want her looking him dead in the face like she was, so he turned away and gestured at the wooden owls watching from behind the bar.

“Sure. I could carve you a couple of them if you wanted.”

“I’ll take six. They’re so practical.”

“Done.” Nickel smiled, drank. “You think it’s true that their eyes lit up when there was booze in the joint back in Prohibition?”

“Their eyes lit up when there were police in the joint. You heard it wrong.”

“That makes more sense.”

“I think it’s just a story.” She was leaning against him now, and he could taste her perfume in the back of his throat like the whiskey.

“Me too. But I like it.”

“Yeah.”

They looked at the owls together. The owls gazed back, eyes blank.

“A wise old owl lived in an oak,” Nickel said. “The more he saw, the less he spoke. The less he spoke, the more he heard. Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?”

The girl who called herself Beth laughed and squeezed his arm. “Where’d you learn that?”

“My father,” Nickel said, because it seemed like the right kind of answer. He’d learned it from the old hunting guide Jake Sietke, the man who’d taken Nickel in that summer when his father left him behind on a moonshine run.

“Smart man,” she said. “What did your dad do?”

“Traveling salesman,” Nickel said. “Like me.”

One of the brunettes—Charlotte or Scarlett or something, another fake name—heard Nickel and said, “So where are you traveling salesmen staying?”

They weren’t girls you could take back to a motor court.

“Right here,” Al Brady said before Nickel could answer, and so it was decided, and Nickel wondered how much money would be left after tonight. They would definitely need to hit a bank, and soon.

He ordered another whiskey.

“You sure can drink,” Beth said.

“Mother’s milk to me. This is swill, though. Best they have here but swill all the same.”

“That’s Canadian Club.”

“You say that like it’s a contradiction.”

She laughed. “What’s your preferred poison, then?”

“Kentucky bourbon,” he said. “Something with legs.”

“Legs?”

He lifted the whiskey glass and tilted it so she could watch the amber liquid rise and fall in the dim light.

“See those trails down the side, the way the whiskey walks back down the glass? Those are the legs. The best stuff, it’ll cling a little longer.”

She took his glass, swirled it, held it up to the light, and they watched the whiskey drip down the glass together. When she held the glass, the effect was erotic, a slow tease. Nickel’s breath was tight in his chest.

“Thin legs,” he said. “See it now?”

“I do.” She drank his whiskey, handed back the empty glass, and smiled. “So… you prefer fat legs?”

“Only on whiskey.”

She laughed at that, the way she laughed at everything he said all the way on up to the hotel room. Beneath her blue dress she wore a garment of white silk and beneath the white silk her skin was whiter still. The silk slid down over risen nipples and he lowered his mouth to them as he fumbled with the garters along her thighs, getting them tangled instead of removed, and she laughed—hell of a laugher, was Beth—and pushed him back and then took care of the undressing herself, nice and slow, letting him watch, almost too slow because he exploded in climax almost as soon as he was in her. The second time was slower, the third rougher, her hands on the headboard and her ass pointed toward him, the bed banging the wall while she put on a show of gasping and moaning that he didn’t need but certainly didn’t mind. He closed his eyes once but then regretted that, because twin visions danced in the darkness: Savannah Cody and Marilyn Hanchell, the heartbreaker and the hostage, Nickel’s life in memories, and so he opened his eyes again and watched the redhead, gripped her hips and pulled himself deeper into her and did his damnedest to forget himself.

When the morning came, the girls were gone, and Brady settled the bill, and only when they were on the streetcar did Dalhover finally ask the question.

“How much we got left?”

“About sixty bucks,” Brady said, and then he lit a cigarette. They all knew what was coming now.

“Need better hardware for a real job,” Nickel said, thinking of their shitty guns and feeling the bullet wound ache in his leg.

“Yeah. I got a lead on that.”

“Oh?”

“Skirt I was with last night? She told me all about her brother, knows an Irish guy, a fence. Right here in the city. She said he’s got guns he needs to trade.”

Brady was talking guns with a skirt. Great plan for fugitives.

“I don’t like that,” Dalhover said.

“Me neither,” Nickel said as the streetcar swayed through a curve. The car was almost empty; they were alone in the back. Good people were off at church.

“I don’t give a shit,” Brady said. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket, unfolded it, showed an address. “Tonight, we see what we can do about an upgrade. Trade the jewelry.”

“That’s a fuckin’ risk,” Dalhover said.

“Gee,” Brady told him, “a bank robber taking a risk. I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

28

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: So after the Minneman murder, the gang went on their spree, and you claim you were left at the Willard Hotel in Franklin, oblivious?

I wasn’t oblivious to anything. I’d just seen a killing—a real killing—with my own eyes. All the innocence was gone. I know you think I hadn’t had any left by then, but I did. I’d seen some romance to what they were doing. I think the whole country did. Watching someone stick it to the bankers and the government after years of being stuck by the bankers and the government, that was satisfying. There were reasons people were rooting for Dillinger.

There were also reasons they stopped. Once the bullets began hitting innocent people—good people, like Officer Minneman—sentiment changed. I understood that in a different way after watching what happened at the church in the cornfields.

I didn’t see Eddie for a long time. I heard from him now and again. Postcards in the PO box, the same way we’d always communicated. For a while, he wrote short apologies. Then he stopped with those. He just sent little lines about missing me and loving me and wishing me the best, things like that.

I went back to waitressing. No one knew I’d been at the church. I was anonymous and he was infamous by then. It seemed like a good way to keep things.

Toland: When did you see him again?

My mother’s funeral. He was such a fool for taking that risk, but… how romantic! The woman despised him, and she despised me because of him, and yet when she died, he took all the risk in the world to make his appearance.

That was a tough day for me, as you might imagine. I had never had a good relationship with the woman, but I’d always intended to impress her. In my own strange way, I loved her. She did want the best for me. For my father. For my son. She was a harsh woman and not a forgiving one, but beneath all that self-righteous judgment were good wishes.

Toland: What do you mean, you’d always intended to impress her? I don’t see many choices in your life that reflect that desire.

Of course you don’t. What I wanted to do was write a book. She respected writers, and I was a good one. I am a good one, although I’m running out of time to prove it. I knew she read my letters before she burned them. I thought she might read the book and burn it… but maybe not. I also thought about a pseudonym. A man’s name, because she didn’t think women should write, or vote, or do anything that suggested power in public. A strange attitude for a woman who wielded so much leverage.

I wanted to write one novel about the world as it really was, not as she wanted it to be. A novel like Dos Passos could write, or Willa Cather, or a few others. I think Hemingway is close, although he’s too concerned with his own sound. Fitzgerald is close, although I tire of the rich people, for reasons you might imagine. I think Mother would’ve hated any book that she knew I wrote, but in her secret heart, she’d have been impressed, if not proud. She loved the written word. I could’ve given her some sentences that lingered. I know I could’ve done that.

But… she died.

Toland: And Nickel appeared at the funeral?

I’m not even sure how Eddie heard the news. Months had gone by without a postcard from him, and he was in the headlines all the time, so I knew he was on the run, but I had no idea where. Baltimore or New Orleans or maybe out west, Arizona. Maybe he’d finally made it to Maine. I hadn’t the faintest idea.

Then the funeral came, and I went, of course, because she was my mother and I loved her despite everything. There were plenty of people who gave me the side-eye, but Dad needed me there, and Alford, that poor child, seemed numb from the inside out. The funeral started at the church and finished at the cemetery. They took her body from the church to the grave site in a wagon instead of a hearse, a wagon pulled by a team of beautiful horses, a scene right out of that awful novel Lamentations of the Shenandoah, which was as she wanted it. They’d already dug the hole, and the earth was ready for her. When we got there, I saw a single bouquet sitting right beside the freshly turned soil, flowers shifting in the breeze.

Virginia bluebells.

I suppose anyone might’ve put them there, and yet I knew it was Eddie. I was certain. I looked around and I found him standing almost out of sight. A silhouette. When he saw me, he took off his hat and blew me a kiss. It was what he used to do when he headed home and I was still in the hayloft, watching him go. It was always hard to see in the twilight as he was fading into the darkness, but I never missed the gesture.

I returned the kiss, and he left, and I thought that would be all. Staying to talk to me was far too much risk.

Then we went home, and the neighbors all came with their pies and casseroles and cards and tears, some meeting my eyes, most looking anywhere else to avoid my face, and eventually everyone was gone. Dad was exhausted, hollowed out in a way I’d never seen him before, and he went up to bed without a word. I put Alford to bed and read him a story and tried not to worry too much about the way he looked at me—as if I couldn’t be trusted. I was a stranger in the house. We both knew it.

I put out the lamp in his room and then I walked downstairs, and it was like walking with ghosts. I fully expected to see her in her chair in the parlor, that straight-backed one by the radio, where she’d read so many books. Where she’d passed so much judgment. She took only the lessons she wanted from the books. That’s such a shame. You can always find an excuse for your own behavior if you search hard enough.

That night, though… that night I wanted nothing more than to hear her cruel, biting tone. I wanted to see her close the book and fold her hands on top of it and look at me with all the dismay in the world and tell me exactly how I’d disappointed her.

Because at least then, she’d still be alive, and there would be a chance for us somewhere down the road. There would be hope that one day we’d look each other in the eye and… if not forgive, at least understand. I always expected we’d get to that point. Where I could say some things, and even if she didn’t say anything back, I would know that she’d heard me.

I always believed there would be time to say the things I’d left unsaid.

Well.

Excuse me. I hadn’t expected that. Of all the people to bring tears to my eyes on the eve of my own execution, it shouldn’t be the woman who judged me the harshest, and yet here we sit. What was I talking about? Oh, Eddie, of course. All you care about.

I couldn’t bear to be in the house without her, because it felt wrong, like a replica of the real home, missing the central piece that held it all together. I went outside, and there on the stoop was another bouquet. Virginia bluebells.

I picked them up and smelled them and I searched the darkness for Eddie. He was gone, and there was no sound, no headlights, nothing. But I could feel him. I knew he was there.

I walked down to the barn, and at the base of the ladder to the hayloft was another bouquet. You know what flowers by now. I climbed the ladder, and I could see him sitting there in the open window, a thousand stars at his back, with one shaft of moonlight that turned the straw white but made him seem even darker than a shadow.

I went to him. I sat on his lap like a girl, and he held me, and he didn’t say a word. We sat like that for a long time before either of us spoke, and then he said, “I’m sorry,” and I told him that I knew that, and he shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have taken the risk. He didn’t answer. We went quiet again, and then he said, “She loved you, Savannah.”

I laughed. It was an awful, bitter sound. I might’ve said “Sure she did” or the like, sarcastic, a denial.

Then Eddie, he told me it was true, and he knew it better than anyone. His voice was real low and he said, “She couldn’t have hated me so much if she didn’t love you even more.”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard truer words.

That was the last we spoke. We sat together for a while longer. We didn’t make love. We just stayed in each other’s arms. I didn’t ask him a thing about where he was or what he was doing or any of that. We sat in the old place that had been so perfect once, and we watched the stars, and that was that. Sometime late in the night, he stood up, and so I had to, and then he kissed me once. Soft and sweet, without saying a word.

He went to the ladder, and he went down, and I stayed behind. I watched his shadow appear on the drive, and even with nothing but the moonlight, I could see him blow me that kiss. I blew one back, and then he was gone, and a long time later I heard an engine start. He drove off without using the headlights.

He knew the way.

29

ALFORD

AT BREAKFAST THE morning after I’d learned of my grandmother’s fortune, Grandfather Cody announced that he wanted to sit down with Agent Toland.

“I want nothing to do with that bastard,” my mother snapped. “You can go alone.”

“He’s not interested in talking to me, but he wants another crack at you, and I think we should oblige. Let him do the talking, and I’ll do the listening. You can learn plenty about what a man believes by paying attention to the questions he asks.”

“He’s an arrogant son of a bitch.”

“With a badge.”

My mother leaned back and folded her arms across her chest. Her jaw was tight.

“Are you telling me,” Grandfather Cody said, “that you can’t match wits with that man for another hour?”

It was hard to persuade my mother to do a thing she didn’t want to do but remarkably easy to get her to do it by challenging her. It was merely a matter of presentation.

“Call him,” she said.

We met with Agent Toland in Prescott’s law office above Monument Circle that afternoon. The FBI man arrived with a self-satisfied look, as if he’d already won.

“Having second thoughts about your story, I understand,” he said by way of greeting.

“On the contrary,” my mother said, “I was hopeful you might have accomplished something of usefulness by now. It seems I was mistaken.”

Prescott broke in hurriedly to explain that the meeting had been called as a show of good faith and cooperation and that my mother was eager to resume the conversation.

“A conversation,” Toland echoed. “Sure. We can have a conversation.” He regarded me sourly. “The boy stays in the room?”

“That’s right,” Grandfather Cody said firmly.

“Hell of a way to raise a kid.”

“I don’t require your input on—” my mother began, but Grandfather Cody cut her off.

“We’re of limited resources for childcare. He’ll stay.”

Toland, hardly convinced, began his questioning. It started as my mother had predicted, with accusations of conspiracy, but every time she grew angry, my grandfather would redirect things with subtle nudges, asking Toland if he could be more specific. That annoyed the FBI agent, but he took the bait.

“Oh, we can get plenty specific, Cody. We have more leads than you can imagine.”

“I’m sure you do. Give her a chance to prove good faith, then.”

Toland glared at him, worked his tongue beneath his lower lip for a few seconds, then turned back to my mother.

“Was there a bar or tavern the gang intended to use as a rendezvous point after escape?”

“I didn’t know they were going to escape, so how would I know that?”

“Why do you ask about a bar?” my grandfather cut in.

“Because we have evidence.”

“Then you shouldn’t need me,” my mother said.

“Tell her more about the place,” Grandfather Cody said. “Maybe she’ll recall it.” His eyes told her to trust him.

“A small taproom someplace near the water,” Toland said.

“You just described a hundred places in Chicago or Milwaukee alone.”

Toland eyed her, drumming a pencil on his notepad. “Think of one with a lighthouse view. Won’t be a hundred of those.”

“A lighthouse?” My mother seemed to forget her dislike of him in a moment of genuine curiosity.

“That’s right.”

She thought. “Well, there are several in Chicago near Navy Pier. There’s a lighthouse in the harbor.”

“No mountains, though.” He was watching her hard, looking for any tell. All she gave him was true confusion.

“Mountains?”

“Yes.”

“It would have to be the West Coast, then, wouldn’t it?” She asked the question in a general way, as if inquiring of the whole room. I kept my mouth shut but I was thinking the same thing. Lighthouses and mountains suggested places I’d never seen: Washington State, Oregon, maybe Northern California. I’d read detective novels set in San Francisco, remembered references to harbor fog and mountain drives.

“I have no idea,” my mother said. “I’ve never been west of St. Louis.”

While Toland worked his jaw muscles and stared her down, my grandfather spoke.

“How do you know so much about it if you don’t know where it is?”

“Don’t worry about that,” Toland snapped.

“We have to. She can’t help you unless you offer some clarity, Agent Toland.”

It was the most respectful he’d been, downright deferential, almost plaintive. The shift in tone was enough to draw Toland’s eyes. They looked at each other for a long moment, and then Toland opened a manila folder and revealed a set of photographs.

“Nickel Terhune sketched the place in elaborate detail in his cell. He wanted someone to see it—or someone wanted him to remember it awfully well. Point is, it mattered. Let’s imagine it matters to you too, Miss Cody. Where is it?”

We all moved closer to the photographs. They showed a cell wall with dark pencil lines over the bleached stone. The sketch was, as he’d said, a remarkably detailed drawing of a bar. It looked almost like an architect’s rendering, something formal. It reminded me of the schematic my grandfather had commissioned for our new barn before building commenced.

“Why, it’s even got measurements,” Grandfather Cody said. “I’m the one who taught him that. The Burns method. He took right to it. He could visualize a scene and re-create it better than—”

Prescott coughed into his fist. Grandfather Cody stopped talking.

“Well, Miss Cody,” Toland said, “do you have any guesses on the location of this place?” He spread out an array of photos, some showing different angles, close-ups. The mountains and lighthouse and harbor were drawn with real artistic talent. The rest was precise, like an operating manual.

“You’re sure it’s not Chicago?” my mother said.

“Again, the mountains are a problem.”

“Yes. But… well, that’s all I can picture. Maybe…” She hesitated, tilted her head for a fresh perspective. “Maybe Green Bay? There’s a place in Door County that he liked.”

“Who liked? Nickel?”

“Brady,” she said absently. She seemed hardly aware of Toland, her focus on the photographs was that intense.

“What was the name of the place?”

“I think it was Irish. McGinty’s or McGowan’s or something.”

Toland put the notepad aside, lit a cigarette, and looked at my mother. Prescott, seeming to disapprove of smoking in his office but afraid to chastise the FBI man, crossed the room and cracked open the window.

“McGinty’s or McGowan’s or something,” Toland said. “Well. That sure is helpful.”

“It’s the best I can do.”

“Hmm.” Toland smoothed the creases in his slacks with his free hand and let the cigarette dangle in his other as his eyes tracked the smoke out the window. They were hard eyes. I wasn’t sure if they were mean. There was a difference. For an instant, I had one of those strange sensations of a memory that didn’t truly exist, a vision of my father’s face that hadn’t come from a newspaper photo or a Wanted poster. Then it was gone like the smoke out the window.

“We’re going to charge you,” Toland said. Quiet, conversational, like it wasn’t big news.

“That silly threat isn’t going to make me remember a bar name,” my mother said.

He kept watching the vanishing smoke. Didn’t look at her when he said, “No threat, Miss Cody. We’ve done all the threatening we have the patience for. This thing, it’s not a game to me. Not a game to Mr. Hoover. Certainly not to the families of dead men in Ohio and Indiana and a kidnapped woman in this fair city. Al Brady and James Dalhover and Nickel Terhune? No one’s cheering for them like people did for Dillinger at the beginning. Times have changed. The public knows there’s no Robin Hood here. There are only gangsters, cold-blooded killers.”

“The Codys are cooperating to the best of their ability, Mr. Toland,” Prescott said. “I’ll remind you that this meeting was at their request.”

“And this opportunity?” Toland tapped the photographs. “This opportunity was offered at my behest. We can all be polite, can’t we? Your request, my behest, there’s a nice fucking word for everything. Here’s where the nice words stop: convicted. You’ll be a convicted felon, Miss Cody. Racketeering and conspiracy and a host of other charges. We’ll get you on one. Then you’ll wish you hadn’t played games.”

Grandfather Cody’s back was so straight, he seemed to sit in perfect alignment with the coat stand beside him.

“You won’t get a conviction without evidence,” he said.

“That’s for a jury to decide, and I’ll save my breath for the courtroom. Consider this the last courtesy extended on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Investigation to the Cody family: She gets to turn herself in. You can explain the process to them, Mr. Prescott.”

Toland gathered his photos and donned his hat and went to the door. No one spoke. The door opened and then clicked shut. The last of the smoke drifted out the window, and the breeze, as if hungry for something fresh, ruffled the single cell-block photograph he’d left on the table like a taunt.

At length, Prescott broke the silence. “This is a formality, nothing more. There are many steps between charges and a successful prosecution, and he won’t be able to deliver them.”

As he went on to explain the way the arrest and charging would be handled, I turned to the window, stunned and numb. Outside, the Soldiers and Sailors Monument towered above the statue of my ancestor, and while I watched, Agent Toland, the man currently prosecuting members of my living family, strode by without a glance at the Reverend General’s bronze likeness. Pigeons scattered out of his path. His arrogance seemed evident in every rapid step. He walked to a gleaming ivory-colored sedan, maybe a Packard or a Cadillac—it was hard to tell from up here—and climbed behind the wheel. I watched the car make a full loop around the monument, like a wolf circling prey, and then it was gone.

I turned back to the table for another look at the photograph of my father’s jail cell, trying to think like Dan Hyland, the police reporter who always stayed cool under pressure. It was hard to take in the details the way my grandfather had taught me, though, when looking at the narrow cot behind those iron bars, I couldn’t think of anything but the possibility that it would be my mother’s next home.

30

NICKEL

THE FENCE AL BRADY had found lived in a place called Pigtown. Nickel had family in Gas City, Indiana, so who was he to judge? He was more concerned with the connotation between pigs and police, but it seemed the Baltimore neighborhood had come by its moniker honestly, nicknamed after the hogs that had once been herded from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad yards to local slaughterhouses. The streets were narrow; some of the sidewalks still had broken panels of slate, long since replaced by concrete in most of the city, and there were even a handful of gas streetlamps, ghosts of a bygone age, their pale light obscured by the fog—or, hell, maybe it was just soot—that hung in the air when Nickel, Brady, Dalhover, and Shaffer arrived in the fence’s neighborhood, each carrying a packet of rings, necklaces, watches, and loose gemstones in his jacket.

It was too muggy for the jackets. Sweat ran down Nickel’s spine, hot at his neck and chill by the time it reached his tailbone, where the Smith & Wesson .38 was tucked in his belt. He preferred to keep it on his back, had learned that the wind could flap your coat open when you least expected it in this coastal city, offering a glimpse of your firearm to any passerby, and that could mean unnecessary trouble.

Of course, taking the extra time to reach for the spine could mean trouble.

Bad options.

The men they passed on the street wore grimy coveralls and carried lunch pails and were too weary to pay attention to strangers. The stench of the slaughterhouses hung in the air like a film, boiled fat and offal, the kind of stink that could make you hold your breath even while your eyes watered. Nickel saw bloodstains in the gutters and hoped it came from the pigs. Heard low whistles from the train yard, the screeches of steel on steel, then the labored chuff of a locomotive that sounded well past its prime.

“Nice neighborhood,” Dalhover observed.

They passed brick row houses, a machine shop where someone was still welding even though it was long past quitting time for most, and a butcher shop where blood-soaked sawdust had been swept out the door and was piled there like old snow. A few blocks away, the B&O roundhouse loomed, both massive and sagging, like a big drunk pulling himself up on the stool. It had been red brick once, but the color had long since been hidden by soot, as if the building’s jowls were begging for a shave and a rinse. Tracks spiderwebbed out in all directions, and from somewhere inside the imposing structure, a steam valve hissed like a warning. Some of the high arched doors were open, revealing the stubby snouts of waiting locomotives, like stabled horses.

They turned right, put the roundhouse at their backs, and kept walking. Brady was eyeing the numbers, checking them against the directions on the scrap of paper in his hand. They reached their destination, number 73, which was also red brick but over the years the brick had begun to fail, and tar paper patched wide areas around the windows and seemed to be carrying an unwise structural role on the front porch. Tin gutters leaked drips from the afternoon rains. Even the rain smelled stale, like fresh weather simply couldn’t penetrate down here; it got caught up in the soot and the stink and ran pale pink with the pig’s blood in the gutters.

They gathered at the base of the porch steps. The sun had settled and what little light the gas lamps offered turned the street into a collage of shadows. A single lamp glowed inside the broken window above the porch. Somewhere inside, or maybe on the back porch, a harmonica wailed, mournful as a lonesome dog’s howl.

“This is our hot tip?” Shaffer said.

“Fuck do you know about tips?” Brady answered. “They got the guns in there or they don’t. Sometimes it’s simple.”

Sometimes, yes, Nickel thought. Pigtown did not feel simple, though. Funny how taking a roller-rink girl’s advice about gun traders could lead you astray. Who would’ve guessed?

But none of them suggested leaving. Hell, they were gangsters. You didn’t walk away from a place because you had a bad feeling.

They went up the sagging porch steps and knocked on the door. Brady, as always, stood like a cocky bantam, but Dalhover and Shaffer let their hands float close to the guns at their hips. Nickel, he just stood.

Footsteps. A hand on an old burlap feed sack that served as the front curtains. The feed sack peeled back, and a young guy with a broad face white as the inside of a potato stared out at them through small eyes. The feed sack fell across the window again, and the door opened.

“You Meacham?” he asked. This was Brady’s alias of the moment. Dalhover was Reynolds, Shaffer was Harrison, and Nickel was Riley. They changed names so often that Nickel got confused and usually just called himself Butch, because Butch had been his favorite of his father’s dogs when he was a boy. It always annoyed Brady that Nickel would revert to this without warning, but, hell, it was just a nickname. He still didn’t know how he’d come by his own.

“Yeah,” Brady said. “Friend of ours, she gave you a call.”

“That’s right.” The Irish kid stepped back from the door and the rest of them went in, Nickel going last. He didn’t like having the door closed behind him, but that was true for most men who’d done prison time.

“My name’s Cassidy,” the Irish kid whose name was surely not Cassidy said. “The others are in the basement. Come on.”

They followed him through the stuffy, cramped old house. A cur dog, some kind of shepherd mix with the clear ribs that announced an underfed animal, growled from the floor near the basement door. Cassidy kicked at it with a heavy, hobnailed boot.

Nickel didn’t like that. He didn’t say anything, just watched the dog scamper away and peel its lips back while Cassidy put a key in a dead bolt and unlocked the cellar door.

Bad dogs, mad dogs, Nickel thought. You could change one. You could create the other.

They went down steep, creaking stairs under a ceiling so low that even Dalhover had to duck to clear it, and he was shorter than most women. The room that waited was stone-floored and stone-walled and smelled of a thousand floods. Furnace and coal bin in one corner, two wide workbenches opposite that, and the benches were lined with guns, every shape and size conceivable. Nickel started right for them, but the two men who were waiting in the basement stepped up and blocked him.

“How you doing, chief?” the taller one said. He was about Nickel’s height, a bit thicker through the chest, wearing a white shirt open at the collar and yellowed by sweat stains. His dark hair was swept back from a sharp widow’s peak and slicked with petroleum jelly, giving it a sickly glossy look, the comb lines showing rows of white skin beneath.

“Fine,” Nickel said. “We’re here about the guns.”

“We’ll get to the guns,” the guy said, and he grinned humorlessly and offered his hand. “Seamus. Shay is good enough, though.”

“Butch,” Nickel said, and shook his hand.

The other man, shorter and thinner with a crooked nose and cauliflowered ears that suggested a losing boxing career, leaned against the workbench and folded his arms over his chest. A pale blue anchor inked his forearm. He wore a flat wool cap that sat up high on his head, begging for someone to knock it off. Probably what he wanted.

“Tommy,” he said simply.

They went around with the introductions then, everyone giving a fake name, no fucking point to the whole exercise, but that’s what you did. Nickel was trying to look over Shay’s shoulder and past Tommy to inventory the weapons. He wasn’t impressed by what he could see. They were filthy, the shotgun barrels pitted, the revolver grips loose, and he wouldn’t trust either of the machine guns to spit a round.

Rewards on their heads, and they’d come down here to trade jewels for junk.

A cold drip found the back of Nickel’s neck. He touched it with his hand, looked up and saw a thick iron pipe sweating moisture, and stepped to the side. If they’d kept the guns down here long, the humidity would have taken its toll. Some hot tip Al had gotten.

“Understand you boys are interested in trading,” Brady said. “That’s good to hear, good to hear.”

He had a way of repeating himself when he was trying to be charismatic, as if saying the same thing twice made it more charming. Hell, maybe it did. People took to Al Brady quickly for reasons Nickel had never been able to explain.

“And you’re just passing through, is my understanding,” Cassidy said. “Won’t be lingering in our city, getting busted with any of these. That right?”

“Sure. We’re on a hunting trip.” Brady grinned, Dalhover laughed, and the one named Shay smirked. Con humor, funny stuff.

“That’s what we like to hear,” Cassidy said. “Baltimore, it’s a crowded place. You know?”

They knew. These guys had turf wars to worry about, neighborhood shakedowns and number-running to do. Nickel wanted to say he’d already spent more time in Pigtown than he desired but he kept his mouth shut.

“We’ll be a thousand miles away before we do any hunting,” Brady said. “Your deer stand is safe, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Good. You got loose stones or pieces?” Cassidy asked.

“Got both.”

“Let’s see ’em.”

Brady took out his bag, casual with his jacket, not minding the three Irishmen seeing his gun, and shook out a handful of loose gems and a few diamonds that Nickel recognized as part of the haul from the second Lima job, the one he’d taken the bullet on. Then Dalhover passed around a few of the watches, and Shaffer showed the rings and necklaces. Cassidy seemed to trust the one named Shay as the best eye for authenticity, giving each new piece only a cursory look himself before handing it to him. Shay spent more time with them, but he nodded over everything.

“They look decent,” he said.

“Better than decent,” Brady said.

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do. Those fucking stones, they came at a price.”

“Yeah? Where’d you happen across them?”

Brady gave a wolf’s smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Sure would.”

“How hot are they?” Cassidy said.

“Not my concern,” Brady said.

“Give me a better answer than that, pal.”

Brady looked at Dalhover. Dalhover said, “I’d make sure you sell them outside of your own city.”

The Irishmen exchanged glances, tried to look hard and unimpressed, but Nickel could see they were wondering, and that was bad. These guys weren’t the type who talked to police of their own free will—they knew damn well they weren’t getting any rewards from J. Edgar Hoover—but they surely bumped against the cops enough that they could be enticed to remember their four visitors on a hunting trip.

“We’re gonna need it all, then,” Cassidy said. “With that kind of risk.”

“Bullshit,” Brady said. “You got forty thousand dollars in jewelry there.”

Nickel hadn’t even shown them his bag, which had more rings and a couple of nice ladies’ watches, and Brady hadn’t mentioned it.

“Forty, my ass,” Shay said. “Even finding the right buyers, we’re looking at ten.”

“You need smarter buyers. Besides, we haven’t even checked the guns yet. They might not be worth ten.”

“They’re not,” Nickel said.

They all looked at him then, and the Irishmen were angry.

“Those are good pieces, every one,” Tommy said.

“Let him look, then,” Brady said. “This boy, he knows weapons.”

“Then he’ll be happy,” Cassidy said. He leaned back against the stone wall, propped one of his hobnailed boots against it. Same one he’d kicked the dog with. He lit a cigar, then nodded at the workbench, giving Nickel permission.

Nickel grunted, shouldered past Shay, and stepped up to the first workbench. They’d arrayed the guns in a kind of order not unlike a jeweler’s watch display, pistols to the left, machine guns to the right. There was only one intriguing piece in the mix, an elegant side-by-side shotgun. Dirty, neglected, but interesting. A Darne. French. Nickel had seen only one like it in his life, at a gun shop in Cleveland. It wasn’t a bank robber’s gun, though. It was a sportsman’s gun, owned by the kind of fella who wore tweed jackets and worked with dogs he hadn’t trained.

Nickel and Brady and Dalhover and Shaffer, well, they weren’t sportsmen. Get on to the guns that counted.

He picked up the first pistol, a Smith & Wesson .38 that was a twin of the one pressed against his spine. The bluing was awful, probably from being kept in the damp, and there was mild pitting.

“It’s a nice piece,” Cassidy said.

Nickel didn’t look at the man, but he could see him out of the corner of his eye, the big black boot braced against the soot-stained wall.

“Muzzle looks like it’s been packed with sand,” Nickel said. “Look at the bore. You’d have better luck pitching bullets.”

“Bullshit.”

Nickel opened the cylinder, spun it, snapped it home, and tugged it side to side. “Loose lockup. You want to die fast, get in a gunfight with a cylinder that won’t stay home.”

He pulled the hammer back, listening for the distinct, piano-key-clear sounds of the cocking sequence. The music was dull and delayed.

“Timing’s off, and the hammer is worn. One of you enjoy dry-firing a gun and playing cowboy?”

“I don’t like this asshole,” Cassidy said, lowering his booted foot from the wall.

Nickel put down the .38 and picked up the next handgun, a Savage 1907 semiautomatic. He dropped the empty magazine and set it down on the bench next to a spread of loose bullets. Racked the slide—grinding action, like dragging a rake through gravel—and shook his head in disgust.

“Just needs oil,” Shay said.

“Yeah?” Nickel returned the slide to half lock, twisted it, popped it off. Inside, the striker spring was missing a coil and the striker lug was split clean in two. These micks either didn’t know a damn thing about guns or were counting on their buyers not to.

He put the slide back in place without a word, set the Savage down, stepped to his right, and picked up a pump shotgun. Wobbled the pump.

“More play than a flat tire. Stock is cracked. Could split straight through next time it’s fired. Junk.”

He dropped the pump gun, picked up another semiautomatic pistol, racked the slide. It hitched, the feel of debris that could have been wiped clean so easily. He felt a wild, irrational rage. It was so damned simple to keep a gun clean. All you had to do was care. Put in a little time with a rag and oil. Look the thing over, listen to it, pay some fucking attention.

“Junk,” he said again, and dropped the pistol and moved on.

“Hey, asshole,” Cassidy said, but Nickel ignored him and grabbed another pump gun, this one a Winchester 1912, which was a beautiful weapon if you didn’t neglect it.

“Listen,” he said, and racked the pump. The sharp scratch echoed in the stone room. Everyone was watching him, Brady’s lean face furrowed with interest, Cassidy’s flushed with anger.

“Pump is binding. Warped.” Nickel ran his fingers down the barrel, felt a bulge near the muzzle. He took a quarter out of his pocket and clinked it against the barrel, let them all hear the dull thud. “Lead was lodged there and then some idiot followed up with another shell. Lucky he didn’t kill himself, but the next guy might not fare so well.”

“He’s scamming us,” the one named Tommy said, hands clenched at his sides, his busted pug nose flaring, ready to fight.

“No, he isn’t,” Brady said. “He knows weapons.”

“Like hell.”

“Where’d you get these?” Nickel said. “Shape they’re in, I’m guessing an armory flooded and these were swept into the gutter.”

“Kiss my freckled ass,” Tommy said.

Brady, not wanting to give up on the weapons just yet, said, “Take a look at the machine guns, Butchie. That’s what matters.”

Butchie. That was a new one. Brady’s voice was conciliatory, trying to calm everyone down, but it also contained enough command that Nickel obliged, moving on down the bench. Shay and Tommy stepped back to let him by, but they didn’t step far. Crowding him, wanting him to be aware of them. Well, fine. He was aware of plenty worse risks than a couple of two-bit Irish prizefighters. He had a bullet wound in his leg that ached every day and these bastards wanted to send him out into a firefight with a collection of cap pistols.

He rubbed his eyes, saw Cassidy’s big black boot swinging at the dog again, saw Savannah Cody smiling at him in the little visitors’ room in the Hancock County jail, back where he’d sketched the saloon that could have existed in some pretty harbor town, and suddenly he wanted to hit someone, anyone. He never wished for a fight, took part in them only when they could no longer be avoided, but something about this stinking basement and these brutal bastards put a pulse in his head that made him feel less like himself and more like Dalhover or Brady.

Bad dogs, mad dogs.

He picked up the first of the Thompsons, felt the weight—eleven pounds, empty—and brought it to his shoulder. It was a muzzle-heavy gun by design, and it felt good, powerfully heavy, built to bring wrath. He rocked it gently. No rattle. A pleasant surprise. He pulled the charging handle back with a snap, felt the fatigue of the recoil spring, no worse than the one Al Brady had brought to Greenfield, Indiana. It could be fixed. He locked the bolt open and tilted the gun toward the bare bulb that dangled above the workbench, then fingered the bronze wedge that was known as a Blish lock. Too much play. Fixable, though. He hit the push-release that dropped the machine gun’s lower receiver. Inside was a small round buffer disk that guided the bolt. He lifted the disk out, studied it, then extended it to the group.

“Cracked. Run a full drum through that and the crack keeps growing. Gun becomes a runaway, won’t listen to you anymore, won’t stop shooting until it’s chewed up its own guts.”

“You’re making up problems,” Cassidy said. “The gun still works.”

“So does a car without a steering wheel, but that don’t mean I want to buy it.”

He looked over the next machine gun. It was better, but he didn’t want to say so out loud.

“Can you fix them?” Brady asked. He wanted the guns. He didn’t care that they’d been neglected. As long as Nickel could make them fire, Brady would be satisfied. Nickel wished he could explain how infuriating it was that they were in this condition to begin with. Sure, he could fix them, but he shouldn’t have to.

“They’re junk,” Nickel said.

“They’re not!” Cassidy roared like Nickel had insulted his family.

“Can you fix them?” Brady repeated, cool, indifferent to the rising rage.

“Of course I can fix them. But you’d best know what you’re buying and set the price accordingly.”

“What should it be?”

Nickel surveyed the array on the benches. “With the machine guns included, they’re worth the watches and the rings. No more.”

“Fucking forget that,” Tommy said.

“Fine. The rings only, then,” Nickel said, and Dalhover gave a high, cackling laugh, feeling the anger in the room the way an overheated man felt rain on his skin, the only thing he ever wanted, a gift.

“I don’t like this guy,” Cassidy said, jabbing a finger at Nickel.

“Ah, go upstairs and kick your dog,” Nickel said, and the man frowned, not following him. Why should he follow him? Nickel could scarcely follow his own thoughts.

“They’re good guns, damn it,” Cassidy said.

“Good guns, my ass.” Nickel grabbed the Savage semiautomatic pistol, dropped the magazine, thumbed one of the loose bullets in, then snapped the magazine home and racked the slide. Everyone stiffened—a round in the chamber had that effect.

“Watch yourself, fella,” Shay said, and Nickel saw that there was a gun in his hand now. Dalhover and Shaffer had their hands on their own pieces; Brady was standing open-handed, a delighted grin on his face, like he couldn’t believe the fun they were all having.

“If you’re the gunsmith,” Nickel told Shay, “then that one in your hand sure as shit doesn’t scare me.”

“Be the last thing you ever see.”

“What about this one?” Nickel said, and put the semiautomatic to the bottom of his own chin.

“The fuck is the matter with this guy?” Tommy said, and took a step back.

Dalhover said, “Nick—” then caught himself, the name escaping against his will.

Brady said, “Everyone cool the hell down.”

Nickel, staring Cassidy right in the face, that potato-white face, thought, Bad dogs, mad dogs, and pulled the trigger.

Click.

There was a pause, a silence so deep that the plink of water dropping from the sweating pipe to the stone floor was audible, and then the room filled with a wild, whooping laugh. Al Brady.

“Tell me again he doesn’t know about fuckin’ guns?” Brady cried. “How’s that?”

It was only later, while Brady and Cassidy were haggling over whether the watches would be included in the trade and everyone was distracted, that Nickel allowed himself to look over at the workbench and see the other semiautomatic pistol sitting there. He’d observed the broken striker lug in the Savage, but when he’d reached for the gun, he’d been in a red rage and his hand found the first of the semiautomatic pistols, that was all. If he’d accidentally grabbed the other one and pulled the same stunt, his brains would be on the dripping pipe on the ceiling right now.

But he’d picked the correct gun. Sure he had. That was called instinct. When you knew something well enough, you didn’t even have to pause to think.

Right?

He touched his brow with the back of his hand. It was as damp as the pink-water gutters in front of the slaughterhouses.

He put his hands in his pockets and stood silently while Brady made his trade, and then they loaded all the weapons into a pair of old steamer trunks. When they carried the trunks up the steps, the house was dark and the dog was gone, but you could hear it growling from somewhere in the shadows, out of sight but not far off.

31

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: So you’re prepared to go to your grave claiming you had no involvement in the Hancock County jailbreak?

Yes, because it’s the truth. I intended to marry him.

Toland: What about the promises to murder him?

Those were inspired words at the time, but I couldn’t have seen it through. I love Eddie. Once he was locked up, and it was clear that he would suffer twice because you’d failed to catch Al Brady and would come down harder on Eddie to make up for that, I wanted to help him. I didn’t think he was beyond redemption. I knew better.

Toland: So during those jailhouse visits, you made no plans with him at all?

Well, we discussed the strategy of his legal defense.

Toland: That’s all?

You sound so skeptical. Yes, that’s all. I suppose there was one exception, but that was the fault of the guards. Every time I came to see him, they’d make a big show of telling me no conjugal relations were allowed. He was a criminal, I wasn’t his wife; there was a whole speech that reminded me of my mother, only it was worse, because the bastards were leering at me the entire time. So on one of the visits, I said the hell with it. We made love on the little wooden table in the visitors’ room. I still have a scar from the splinter on my thigh. It wasn’t the easiest way to have sex, considering they kept his ankles shackled and his hands cuffed, but there was no shackle on the part that mattered. Those chains made a hell of a racket, though. I have to confess, the sounds might have enhanced the experience. And I was good and loud on my end, because I wanted the guards who’d lectured me about virtue to get an earful. I knew what they really wanted was a peek, although I wasn’t about to grant them that, of course. I do have a lady’s dignity, despite what you might think. There was this little window in the door that the guards would use to check on us, and I covered that with my bra. That was the most exciting thing any jail guard in Hancock County had seen in a long time, I assure you. I’d worn a red one, bright and lacy. They took their time knocking on the door, so I think they were pretty excited by the spectacle.

Toland: What was your opinion of Nickel after the Brady Gang terrorized an entire town to break him out of jail?

Well, it was hardly his plan, and I knew that, but I’ll admit it changed the way I saw the future. There were moments, particularly when I was making contact with Paul McNutt, when I really thought I could limit the sentence to a minimum; Eddie would serve some time, and I could establish a new relationship with my son and repair the one with my father. But after Brady and Clarence Lee shot up Greenfield, I knew that was done. Eddie had to keep running then. That was the only option.

Toland: Why did you choose to set off on your own to find him rather than cooperate with authorities?

I was cooperating with you, but you all refused to believe it. I wasn’t hiding anything. Now, I suppose I hadn’t confessed about my presence at the church where Officer Minneman was killed, but what fool would do that? This wild notion that I had somehow orchestrated the jailbreak with Al Brady and Clarence Lee was madness, yet that was the accusation, and you all were determined to make it stick.

Toland: Say what you want about your cooperation, you did set off with your father and son in search of the men alone rather than in cooperation with law enforcement.

That’s true. I had ideas of where I might find Eddie. I didn’t expect he’d stay with the others for long. If I had the opportunity to speak with him and only him, I wanted to take it. I also wanted him to meet his son somewhere outside of a jail cell. My father was motivated by the crisis at hand, as he should’ve been, but I had some other notions.

Toland: Do those choices seem like mistakes to you now?

My life seems like a mistake now.

32

ALFORD

MY MOTHER’S ARREST proved the Cody family still had a bit of clout in Indiana, because the press wasn’t informed of it until bail was posted and we were gone from the courthouse.

They found out soon after. Grandfather Cody disconnected the telephones in our hotel rooms because the reporters kept calling and calling.

“We’ll head home tomorrow,” he announced. “It’s late and I’m tired.”

No one objected to the idea of returning to the farm or commented on the casual way he’d determined that my mother was coming with us.

We ate room service together and then my mother went back to her room to sleep, leaving me with my grandfather. Grandfather Cody told me to follow suit, then announced he was stepping out for a cigar. I listened to his footsteps and knew he’d simply crossed the hall to my mother’s room. They were talking without me, which I hated. It is one thing to know you’re a child and another to endure it. I didn’t want to be protected from any of the reality ahead.

For the first twelve years of my life, I’d understood myself to be the bastard son of a criminal. Then I learned my grandmother had been rich and held power with politicians, and then I became the son of not one but two parents facing criminal charges, all within twenty-four hours. To say the visit had been tumultuous was an understatement.

I tried to read my Dan Hyland book but couldn’t focus on it. I was too distracted by the conversation taking place across the hall without me. I considered going to the door and trying to listen but I was sure that Grandfather Cody would catch me. So instead, I found myself at the window, gazing out at the dark town, and it took me longer than it should have to notice the ivory sedan parked below.

Agent Toland. It was the same car I’d seen parked on Monument Circle.

Was he watching us? I couldn’t see anyone in the car, but the streetlight reflected off the windshield and made certainty impossible. I debated telling my grandfather, then looked at the Dan Hyland book on my bed and thought that this was one mystery I could solve myself. While my grandfather and mother were making plans without me, I’d prove my worth. They’d be interested to know that Toland was watching our hotel, and Grandfather Cody would be duly impressed by my detective work.

I slipped out of the room quietly, paused in the hallway, and listened. I could hear my mother’s voice on the other side of her door, and then my grandfather answering. It didn’t sound as if they were wrapping up, which was good, and besides, he’d told me he was going out for a cigar. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to walk out on the street and look for him? A cover story, Dan Hyland would’ve called it.

I skipped the elevator and took the stairs. The lobby was quiet, the café closed for the night; a lone employee was mopping the floors. He didn’t look up when I went out into the warm, humid night. Toland’s car had been parked on the side street, not directly in front of the hotel, so he had no angle to see me, but still I made a show of craning my neck around as if looking for my grandfather. Then I put my hands in my pockets and went whistling up the street, doing my best to look like a kid in search of his cigar-puffing grandfather.

When I rounded the corner, I was facing the ivory car. It was a Packard, I saw, and without the distance and the streetlight’s glare, I could see that it was empty. Toland wasn’t peering at our hotel rooms with binoculars. I sighed, disappointed that I would have nothing real to report, and I was just about to head back to the room when I saw the brightly lit front room of a restaurant across the street, still open, the last place in town that was. Considering that the rest of the little town was dark, and Toland didn’t appear to be lurking in the bushes or pretending to read a newspaper or any of the other silly surveillance techniques I’d read about, I figured the restaurant was worth a look. I crossed the street and walked toward the light.

He was there, all right, but I hadn’t been prepared to see who he was dining with. Sitting in the booth across from him was Prescott—our lawyer.

Was he negotiating my mother’s plea bargain over coffee and pie at a diner? It seemed odd, but maybe the FBI man had summoned him, and Prescott, doing his job, jumped at the opportunity.

I moved back into the shadows of an elm tree beside the restaurant and watched them talk. The longer I watched, the less I liked it. Prescott seemed too agreeable, often nodding his head and twice smirking at something Toland had said as if the FBI agent were a real wit. There were no notepads at hand, no paperwork between them. It seemed as if they were enjoying each other’s company just fine, and that bothered me. I was too young to understand the law but old enough to understand human nature.

Toland was our threat, possibly our enemy. Grandfather Cody was paying Prescott to deal with the threat. This didn’t look like an aggressive way to go about it.

I was just thinking that I should report back to my grandfather when Toland picked his hat up and put it on his head and Prescott reached for his jacket. They were leaving.

I started to run, then realized that would draw attention and opted to hide instead. The elm’s trunk was broad, and its canopy threw wide shadows. I slipped behind it as the FBI agent and our lawyer stepped out and parted ways. Prescott’s car, a gleaming Cadillac, was parked directly in front of the restaurant. While the lawyer unlocked it, Toland walked up the street, and I heard his parting words clearly:

“Could be a hell of an opportunity for you.”

“I understand that,” Prescott said, and then he was in his car, and Toland was passing by me in the night. He never looked to his left or right, just walked, his eyes straight ahead, with the brisk, arrogant stride that had scattered the pigeons in Monument Circle that afternoon when he’d set off to prosecute my mother.

I waited in the shadows until he got in his car and drove off. It didn’t take long. He left town fast, barely slowing as he passed the brick jail where my father had been housed until Al Brady arrived with a machine gun. There was something about his speed—on foot and in the car—that scared me.

But at least it made sense. Our own lawyer’s behavior did not.

Could be a hell of an opportunity for you.

I ran back to the hotel.

Grandfather Cody was still with my mother, and he looked impatient when I banged on the door. His expression changed quickly when I told him what I’d seen, though.

“Are you certain it was Prescott, Alford?” my mother asked, but Grandfather Cody didn’t question me. He trusted me.

“ ‘Hell of an opportunity,’ he said?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, that’s nice. I’d hate for Mr. Prescott to be lacking in opportunities.” He tugged at his mustache, then shook his head. “Let’s give the gentleman the benefit of the doubt for the evening. I’ll call him in the morning and ask whether he’s had any further word from Toland. That will tell us all we need to know. Good work, Alford.”

The pride I felt then was far better than anything I’d known from a good grade on a school assignment or a compliment over a chore like fence painting. I could help, and he knew it.

33

NICKEL

IT TOOK NICKEL four days to get all the guns in working order.

They left Baltimore in the stolen Ford, drove to Pennsylvania, and settled in Reading, where they found rooms at a boardinghouse for a week and paid with what was nearly the last of their cash. Between the four of them, they had three dollars left.

Nickel took a basement room so he could unload the guns from the car quickly, shielded from the road and the gin joint out front; the other three took rooms upstairs. While he worked on the guns, they scouted Reading for likely targets. One day they robbed a gas station and made a grand total of twenty-three bucks. Nickel demanded they use some of that money to buy quality screwdrivers, a Starrett pin punch set, a bench vise, and cleaning rods. Dalhover griped loudly about the investment, but Brady shut him up.

“Point is that when you pull the trigger, you can count on the fucking gun firing. You really want to short Nickel a buck and draw down on a cop with a question in your mind?”

They bought him the tools, along with Hoppe’s No. 9 oil, the gold standard for gun maintenance, but Nickel tested Dalhover’s patience when he requested Singer Sewing Machine Oil instead. It was the brand he’d started with, and he was just superstitious enough to want the firearms to smell like the guns that hadn’t landed him in a cell. He worked so hard that he was done fast, and that was good and also bad: As soon as the weapons were ready, Al Brady intended to use them.

“We need a big score,” he said. “No more gas stations, no more hick-town jewelry stores that we’ve gotta find a fence for, no small banks. Something big. Something that sets us up for the rest of the year, long enough for Hoover’s dicks to give up.”

Hoover seemed unlikely to give up, judging from what had happened to Dillinger and Baby Face and the Barkers, but nobody pointed that out. Instead, they turned their attention to the possibilities. For Nickel, that meant his road maps. For Brady, it meant the newspapers.

“Fourth of July coming up,” Brady mused as he read one of the Philly papers. “Banks are closed on the Fourth.”

“Who’s gonna open the till for us if the place is empty?” Nickel asked.

“We are,” Brady said. “Jimmy, tell him what you found.”

Dalhover hated to be called Jimmy, but he was so excited that he ignored it this time and started carrying on about how, while he was out running the roads, he’d noticed a delivery truck from the Atlas Powder Company, a Pennsylvania-based outfit that specialized in blasting equipment for quarry and mining operations. He’d pulled off the road, swung around, and followed it on the delivery run.

“Five mines with good gates and armed guards,” he announced. “The last one, though, one old-timer working the gate, must be seventy if he’s a fuckin’ day, and they unloaded into a shed about as secure as an old barn, cracks in the walls so wide you could take the whole place down, plank by plank, and your biggest worry would be a splinter.”

“What do we know about blasting?” asked Nickel. “Nobody here has a damn clue about safecracking.”

Another surprise: Shaffer had worked for a time at limestone quarries back in Indiana, one in a town called Stinesville and another in Ellettsville. They hadn’t been long stints, on account of he was fired for stealing from one and for screwing the daughter of the owner at the other, but he knew dynamite and blasting caps—or so he said.

With Shaffer, Nickel was never sure. Kid was so eager to impress that he might be all talk.

“All the guns are ready?” Brady asked.

“All but one. The fancy piece, that side-by-side French shotgun.”

Brady waved a cigarette in disgust, flecking Nickel with ash. “We don’t need that.”

No, they didn’t, but Nickel wasn’t about to leave it behind. It was a beautiful gun. Useless right now, but with proper care? A gorgeous, unique piece, one that made him think of the rich bird hunters who’d visited the Kankakee Marsh clubs and tipped him with silver dollars after he cleaned their birds following a long day on the water.

“The tommies, though, they’re ready?”

Tommies. Al had been reading too many of his own press clippings.

“One is junk, and one is flawless,” Nickel said. “Now. Took some work.”

“Good boy,” Brady said, like he was speaking to a dog. “All right, then. The big score is there for the taking. Got to pick the right one is all.”

By the next morning, he had his target: the Adirondack Trust Company in Saratoga Springs.

“How in the hell did you pick that one?” Dalhover asked.

Brady’d been reading about the community, all the rich city folks who headed upstate in the summer with money burning holes in their pockets to go to the horse track. That was in Saratoga Springs. The cash flowed in, and the track owners had to put it somewhere. That was the Adirondack Trust Company, right on Broadway, heart of the city.

“Peak of summer, holiday weekend, you know how much money that bank will be holding? Could be two, three hundred thousand. A bigger job than Dillinger or Pretty Boy or any of the rest ever pulled. Kind of job lets us wind the whole thing down, go live on a fuckin’ island somewhere, drink rum cocktails and fuck island girls.”

Or the kind of job that got you killed. It was always chancy, hitting banks, but one like that, in a racetrack town? Different. Even chancier.

And big.

There was no denying that it would be big.

Nickel kept quiet while the others debated it, knowing that in the end, they’d back Brady. It was easy to believe in Al even if you did not exactly believe Al. There was a difference.

“I’ll need to know the roads,” Nickel said at last. It was dusk and they were sitting at a picnic table behind the boardinghouse, talking low, passing a bottle of rye back and forth, everyone going easy with it, beginning to feel the weight of this thing, a job like they’d never attempted in a city they didn’t know.

“What I’m counting on you for, with all those maps,” Brady said.

“None of it means a thing if we don’t actually have the dynamite and blasting caps.”

“We’ll have them,” Dalhover promised, and damned if he wasn’t right.

That night they drove out to the railroad spur where Dalhover had sighted the Atlas Powder Company truck, then backtracked until he found the quarry on the east side of the city that was manned by the old-timer and had the weather-beaten shed. All was as he’d described it. They parked the Ford on a high hill where the gatehouse could be seen and killed the lights and waited. At nine, the old man came out, smoked a cigarette, and wandered the grounds, not covering much distance, maybe a hundred feet. At ten, he did the same thing. Hourly checkups.

They moved just after eleven. Brady and Dalhover carried shotguns and pistols; Nickel and Shaffer brought two cloth sacks, a flashlight, a claw hammer, and a pair of bolt cutters. They were through the fence in two minutes flat, and Nickel was thinking they’d have to brace the old man and get his keys because surely he locked the door before he went wandering on his rounds.

The door was open. Sometimes, you got lucky.

The big shed smelled of stone dust and gasoline but it was organized, well kept. Took only a few seconds of panning with the flashlight to find a dozen boxes stacked on cheap pine shelves, their sides stenciled red with ATLAS POWDER CO., 50-POUND CASE, DANGEROUS.

Nickel used the claw hammer to pry one case open and transferred eight sticks of dynamite to his sack, moving gingerly, which made Dalhover chuckle.

“They don’t blow up without the caps.”

Nickel stayed careful all the same. Brady was standing at the shed door, waiting on the old guard to return. So far, so good.

Shaffer found the blasting caps at the far end of the shed, used the bolt cutters to open that case, then counted out ten brass blasting caps, each one with a thin green-tipped fuse dangling from the top like the candle on a birthday cake. He left the rest of the caps in place, then folded his bag carefully around the ten he’d stolen, treating the package with infinite care as he wrapped it into something like a football held under his arm. They paused then, all of them looking at the door, Al standing there with the gun in his hand, waiting for action.

The old watchman was still gone.

“Can’t be this easy,” Brady said.

“Don’t sound disappointed,” Nickel told him.

They were back to the car without a shot fired or even a shout. Ten miles later, they were still laughing about their luck, saying how old was that damn guard, and how much did they pay the bastard to smoke cigarettes out in the quarry while several of the FBI’s most-wanted fugitives pillaged the company blasting shed.

Nickel liked easy as much as the next guy, but he had a theory that any job held its share of good luck and its share of bad luck, and he’d rather have taken the bad luck out at that lonesome Pennsylvania quarry with one old man than up in Saratoga Springs.

They drove through the night, Nickel at the wheel, through the winding mountain roads, the Ford’s motor muttering as if in complaint at the switchbacks and steep inclines. Signs for the Poconos came and went, and then, nearing daybreak, they saw the peaks of the Endless Mountains, black against the graying sky. Nickel thought that was a hell of a name, the Endless Mountains. He couldn’t decide if he liked it or feared it. Either way, he drove through them.

In Binghamton, they stopped for breakfast at a place called the Arrow Diner. The air was cool and crisp, dew on the fenders of the parked cars, summer not having penetrated this far upstate yet. Everything was lush and green and lovely, but Nickel imagined the winters were hell. The waitress was friendly, asking about their business in the area. Nickel would’ve lied, said they were just passing through, but Al Brady grinned at her in that way he had that made a woman feel as if she were the only female he’d ever laid eyes on and told her they were headed to Saratoga Springs and intended to leave with big bucks.

Nickel winced at that, but the waitress, she just laughed.

“You’re not the only one says that on the way to Saratoga. Stop in on the way back and tell me how it went.”

“Horses, they practically talk to me,” Brady said.

“Oh, yeah? Give me a sure bet, then.”

“I just did.” Brady spread his arms wide and smiled wider. “Me. If you hear of a big score in Saratoga this week, it’ll be yours truly counting the cash.”

The balls on this guy. Wanted to be remembered, to give the waitress a story for when the job was done and she saw the picture in the paper and put it all together. He was feeling fine, cocky and strutting, and though it should have made Nickel nervous, it filled him with confidence instead. This wasn’t the hair-trigger, why-don’t-the-bastards-take-me-seriously version of Al Brady; it was the brash gangster who was sure things would work out. One had better luck than the other. Either could get you killed, sure, but it was easier to ride in on a job when Al was feeling high.

They hit Saratoga in the late morning of July 3. It was a pretty spot, Nickel couldn’t deny that, with brick buildings and parks in every direction, ponds and gazebos and fountains, the kinds of things that gambling money could bring to a town. Tourists came for the racing or the waters, which were reputedly healing springs, similar to those near Nickel’s home country, back in West Baden and French Lick, Indiana.

It was an easy place to spend money in a hurry. That was good.

Brady wanted to be on Broadway where the Adirondack Trust Company was located. That put them in the Adelphi Hotel, one block south of the bank. The Adelphi was a three-story building with a two-tiered veranda that offered a clear view of the bank across Division Street. It was a Saturday, the Fourth of July falling on Sunday, and the bank closed at noon. The gang sat on the veranda, had lunch, and sipped a few beers—local stuff, Beverwyck Irish Cream Ale—everyone staying away from the hard liquor without needing to discuss it. They were working now, and everyone felt it. Even Clarence, the kid, seemed focused, and Nickel breathed a little easier, watching that. They were counting on this kid who’d been fired from two Indiana quarries to do the heavy lifting.

Could he really blast open a bank vault?

They’d picked a hell of a spot to find out. The town was bustling, buildings packed in close to one another, pedestrians always in motion, and the police presence was considerable. Foot patrols, officers in blue uniforms and creased caps, cars too. Brady suggested the local cops were all on the take, paid off by New York City or Albany interests that controlled the horse racing, but it didn’t matter if he was right or wrong; the cops didn’t get a dime from the Brady Gang and so would be delighted to make their names by apprehending them.

Nickel left the Adelphi veranda, saying he was going to buy a paper, and used the task as an excuse to walk by the bank and find the police station. Shit, it was close. He stood outside the police station long enough to light a cigarette, then turned on his heel and walked back, counting the steps between the building and the Adirondack Trust.

Three hundred paces. That was how damn close they were.

The bank itself was a scaled-down version of a design that belonged in Washington, DC. Granite and marble with sculpted columns, more like a statehouse or capitol building than a bank. It was imposing, built to say We’re here to last in an era when that wasn’t a sure thing for any bank. Nickel had been in plenty of banks, had robbed more than a dozen, and none of them had looked anything like this.

He tried not to be intimidated by the sheer scale of the place—or by its proximity to the police station. Went back up onto the Adelphi veranda and joined the others and ordered another Irish cream ale, trying to look relaxed as he told them how many steps he’d counted between the police station and the bank. Brady was indifferent.

“Downtown, you know it’s always gonna be close.”

“Didn’t know it would be like running in from center field.”

“Well, cops are going to be gone anyhow.”

“Police don’t close for the Fourth of July.”

“No, but they go where the action is. You look at the event schedule for tomorrow? It’s all happening down at the lakes. Trolleys are running out to Saratoga Lake and Lake George. You got picnics, bands, and fireworks. Once the parade winds up, this strip will be deader than a buzzard’s breakfast.”

“Break the glass on that door, an alarm’s going off,” Nickel said. “I guarantee it.”

“Don’t intend to break glass. Nobody’s going to leave that bank unguarded; it’s too damn big, too much money inside. There will be a guard, maybe two. They’ll come to the door when we knock.” Brady smiled, shrugged. “Then we’re in.”

Nickel didn’t like it. They’d robbed banks on main streets and in the hearts of villages before, sure, but those had been backwater burgs, little farm towns with a handful of deputies more likely to duck at the sound of gunfire than run toward it. Saratoga Springs was a different ball game.

Different money too, he reminded himself. One job to replace twenty, if they pulled it off.

He picked up the newspaper, trying to distract himself from all the ways it could go wrong, and there on the front page was a story about the racetrack preparing for its summer opening.

“Al.”

“What?”

“Look here.” Nickel reversed the newspaper, pointed. “The fuckin’ track isn’t even open yet.”

Brady squinted, shrugged.

“What’s that matter?” Clarence asked.

“This guy was talking to a waitress about how we were coming up here to gamble.”

“Ah, she don’t know a horse track from a scrambled egg,” Brady said.

“Bullshit. She’s nearly local. She’s probably wondering about us now.”

“Let her wonder,” Brady snapped. He never liked being caught in a mistake. He’d drawn attention, and he knew it. “Nickel, the way I always had it figured, your job was maps. Put down the paper and pick up the maps.”

“Thought my job was the guns,” Nickel said. “Or did they fix themselves?”

“The hell crawled up your corn-fed ass? You take one stroll by the police station and pucker up?”

Nickel sighed, looked out at the crowded street, and tried to cool off. A lady in an ornate hat was walking a little dog past the bank. The dog lifted its leg and squirted into a flower bed and they moved on. He watched them until they were out of sight, then said, “I’ll go read my maps. Tonight we plan, and plan good. No fucking around. No bars, no skating. That building?” He pointed at the Adirondack Trust, and they all followed his finger. “It’s not the Kay Jewelry store in Lima, Ohio. We all best understand that. Because I nearly died in front of that place, and it was small ball compared to the one we’re looking at.”

He took his Irish cream ale and left the veranda and went up to his room. He had five different maps of upstate New York—Shell, Rand McNally, Citgo, a couple others. By tomorrow, he’d need to have them all in his head.

34

ALFORD

THE MORNING AFTER my mother’s arrest, Grandfather Cody called Prescott and asked the lawyer if he’d heard anything from Agent Toland. No, he was assured, not a word, but Prescott would keep us posted.

“That settles that,” Grandfather Cody said. “Alford’s eyes told me what I should have known: The man can’t be trusted. We’ll use Fred Priest, back home. He doesn’t charge too much and he’s honest. Funny how those things tend to go together.”

“Does he have any experience with the FBI?” my mother asked.

“I doubt it. That is why he will need some assistance.” He sipped his coffee and said casually, “I expect it is time for me to return to the detective business.”

“Pardon?” my mother said. I gaped at him. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, pretending indifference to our responses.

“Been retired too long. The more I see of these Bureau boys, the less impressed I am. Seems the least I could do as an American is assist.”

“What do you intend to… detect?” my mother asked.

“Well, Savannah, the way I understand it, the good people of this country need some bandits captured, and my sweet daughter needs some witnesses to shore up her story.”

“It’s no story; it’s what happened.”

“Makes the witnesses all the more important. Now, you say you had no communication with Al Brady. The FBI believes otherwise. A question that comes to my mind: Could Brady have communicated with Nickel through other means?”

She was quiet, watching him.

“I don’t know,” she said at last.

“It’s possible,” Grandfather Cody said. “Another inmate, a bribed guard, a threatened public defender. Any of it is possible.”

“I suppose.”

He forked some eggs into his mouth, chewed, and tugged on his mustache. “Give me ideas you wouldn’t have shared with Toland.”

“About the bar Eddie drew?”

“About anything.”

She hesitated, then said, “He talked about Maine. There was a place we used to daydream about called Moosehead Lake, way up in the northern woods. That appealed to Eddie. To Brady and Dalhover, though? I can’t imagine they’d like it.” She tilted her head. “On the other hand… it’s not so far removed from the Dillinger approach, is it? Holing up in the woods by the lakes, the way they did in Wisconsin. If it feels like a choice Johnnie would’ve made, Al might try it.”

“We’ll head home,” Grandfather Cody declared, “and we’ll lay plans.”

My Dan Hyland adventure novels had nothing on this. I was living one: My own grandfather, an actual detective, was pursuing my own father, an actual bank robber. It was embarrassing to be exhilarated by it all, and yet… how could I not be?

This was my spirit and energy until that evening back at the farm, when Grandfather Cody sat me down in the parlor and told me I wouldn’t be traveling with them, that I’d be staying with Swede.

“I don’t want to stay with Swede! I’ve been away from you long enough, and if Mom isn’t staying here, why, I won’t have any family.”

“You love Swede, and he loves you. Don’t pretend that I’m saddling you with a stranger here. Besides, there’s your schoolwork.”

“It’s summer!”

“Well, it won’t be for long, and you’ve missed enough time. You’ve got catching up to do. You need to finish your great-grandfather’s book, for one. That was a promise.”

“You remember what Grandmother always said?” I asked. “ ‘Blessed are those who volunteer to serve.’ I’m volunteering!”

He paused, a glimmering in his eyes. I mistook it for amusement at first and thought I might’ve scored a point, but then he blinked and looked at my grandmother’s empty chair.

“Alford, don’t make this harder on me.”

If not for the unanticipated brightness in his eyes, I’d have pushed it. Instead, I settled for sullen.

“How long will you be gone?”

“I’m not sure. I have no illusion of locating these men myself, but if I can find a quality lead and hand it off, then… well, that’s the best way to go about it. This search could take us through rough places. It’s not for a child. You’re wise enough to know that.”

“It’s my family!” I cried. “I don’t have much of that left, if you haven’t noticed!”

He fixed me with a hard, level gaze. “Do you want to speak to me of losses?”

I said nothing. At length, he rose and left the room, the matter concluded.

At least in his mind.

My mother had evidently been nearby, listening to the whole conversation, because she slipped into the parlor and put her arm around me. I didn’t want to be comforted, though, so I shook free of her arm, banged open the door, and ran to the mill pond.

I was there, hurling stones at the water with all my might, the splashes unsatisfying, when she arrived. She didn’t say anything, just scrambled up the old foundation stones, located a comfortable seat, and watched me burn my rage out. My shoulder tired faster than my anger, and I stopped chucking the rocks and stood breathing heavily, hands clenched at my sides.

“It was a fine pitch,” my mother said.

“I wasn’t pitching,” I snapped petulantly. “It’s not baseball; they’re just rocks.”

“I meant the pitch to your grandfather to go along. The last bit was inspired. That talk of volunteering, then quoting scripture by way of Mom? Why, that nearly outflanked him.”

I looked up at her. She was sitting atop the foundation, arms hugged to her chest, the last of the evening sun reddening her hair.

“Well, it didn’t work.”

“No. He loves you too much and sees too much risk.”

“If everyone loves me so much, why are they always leaving?”

“He’s never left you,” she said softly. “And he wouldn’t now if we hadn’t found ourselves in this awful spot thanks to a ridiculous lawman and farm boys with guns.”

I thought that she was conveniently leaving herself out of the cast of key players.

“You’d take me, wouldn’t you? You already did! We went to a bootlegger’s house and we were stopped by police and chased out of a diner! But at least you brought me along.”

It had slipped my mind that my initial sense of that day had been that I was a hostage.

She shielded her eyes and gazed at the sunset. I thought she was ignoring me until she spoke again.

“You really ought to read a little farther in the Reverend General’s book,” she said.

“Now you’re telling me to read that dumb old thing?”

“I know it’s dryer than kindling, Alford, but there’s value in the text. You might get up to the part about Fisher’s Hill, anyhow. Skip ahead; I won’t tell Dad.”

“I don’t want to read any of it.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. But remember what I told you about your pitch in the parlor. You might also recall that your grandfather tends to prepare early and travel light.”

“What does that mean?”

“Get back to the house before dark,” she said, rising. “You’ll need to be washed up for bed. I expect you’ll see us off in the morning. Unless, of course, you take the childish way out and run off to hide in the woods, leaving a note behind. Your grandfather won’t take the bait and stay to root you out of whatever hidey-hole you’ve chosen, I assure you.”

It had never occurred to me to be so insolent as to hide from them, and her remark was so specific that I was bewildered. “I won’t do that.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll have a fine time with Swede.”

“What did you mean about preparing early and traveling light?”

“Hmm? Oh, I don’t know. Talk gets away from me. Now, go home, Alford, and make sure to get your reading in this evening.”

With that, she was off, stepping nimbly down the crumbling stone tower. She winked at me, turned, and walked toward the farmhouse, leaving me more baffled by her than I’d ever been—which was really saying something.

My grandfather bade me a polite good night, which I matched in proper sullenness to let him know his betrayal would not be soon forgotten. I heard his bedroom door open and close, then the creak of the steps, then a banging at the foot of the stairs. I slid out of bed and crept to the window. He had the Lincoln’s trunk open and was putting his suitcase inside. As my mother said, he traveled light, habits picked up from his time on the road.

Why had she mentioned his packing to me and then told me to read the book?

I lit the oil lamp, opened the book, and flipped through the pages. Some hundred or so beyond my current place in the text I found the chapter titled “Fisher’s Hill, September 21, 1864.” It opened with one of the Reverend General’s trademark proclamatory sentences: “There is no fighter more crucial to a complex campaign than a scout capable of remaining concealed for long periods.”

From there, the action picked up faster than it had in earlier chapters. The sermons were few and the tension high. Confederate general Jubal Early held the fortified Fisher’s Hill, but the Union general Philip Sheridan designed a flanking maneuver relying on volunteers. Lightly equipped and moving without artillery support, their only tactic pure stealth, the men slipped past sleeping sentries.

“Had Jubal detected the volunteers who crept like foxes through the fog, the battle would surely have been lost, and perhaps the war and its great cause would have followed.”

My mother’s hint seemed clear enough.

I wrote my farewell note by the light of the oil lamp, placed it on my pillow, snuffed out the lamp, and crept into the hall. No one stirred. The Lincoln’s keys hung from a pin beside the front door. I palmed them silently. Outside, my path was noiseless through the dew-gathering grass. I unlocked the trunk, then waited for a long moment with my breath trapped, expecting a light to come on inside, a voice to call out.

Nothing. There was fog low over the river, just as in the Reverend General’s account of Fisher’s Hill, and I took this as a good sign. I opened the trunk and felt around inside. Suitcases, mostly my mother’s, but her big steamer trunk was not among them, leaving plenty of space. Additionally, a folded blanket had been placed inside—the perfect concealment and the physical incarnation of her wink.

I left the trunk lid lifted, returned to the house, and replaced the key.

Air would be the problem, I decided, trying to think through the experience of riding in the trunk. The Lincoln wasn’t airtight, but I didn’t want to rely on pinholes and slowly suffocate.

What I needed was a breathing tube.

It took me twenty minutes to settle on the right approach: the cleaning wand from my grandmother’s beloved Electrolux vacuum. It was about eighteen inches long, a thin metal extension designed for reaching narrow crevices. Once I rinsed it in water from the hand pump near the barn, its dusty taste was hardly noticeable.

I returned to the Lincoln and used my jackknife to carefully cut a small piece of rubber weather stripping away from the trunk lid. Damaging my grandfather’s beloved Lincoln-Zephyr in such a way felt like sacrilege and surely was the most brazen thing I’d ever done, but these were desperate times. Like the battle at Fisher’s Hill, the Union depended on my stealth.

Once I’d satisfied myself that the tube would slip through the gap in the weather stripping, I climbed into the trunk, nestled between the suitcases, and wedged the vacuum wand through. A simple test revealed that I could breathe in great, clean gasps if I wished.

For the first time in my life, I was grateful for my small stature. A lot of boys my age couldn’t have fit in the trunk comfortably. For me, it was downright cozy—especially with the blanket.

It might hide me if Grandfather Cody opened the trunk. It would absolutely work if he did not, and because he prepared early and traveled light, he would have little reason to open it. He wanted to be on the road before dawn, and darkness was my friend.

It would all come down to whether my mother’s assessment of his reaction to my note was correct—and whether I could remain silent.

I did not sleep that night. I kept the trunk lid cracked and watched the fireflies dance in the fields until the fog crept in and obscured them. When the sky pinkened in the east, I steeled my nerve, said a silent prayer, then reached up and closed the trunk lid, sealing myself inside.

Panic came immediately. All those hours spent planning for the moment couldn’t match the reality of it; I thought of Edgar Allan Poe, of beating hearts beneath solid floors, of lives ended behind walls.

I’d have begun to scream and bang on the steel lid above me had I not concocted my plan with the vacuum wand. I wrapped my trembling lips around it, gasped, and tasted stale dust… and cool morning air. Wonderful, blessed air.

By the time I heard my grandfather’s agitated voice and my mother’s indifferent one, I was calm again, and the air came smooth and steady.

“Well, what did you expect him to do, send you off with fireworks and a parade?” my mother was saying. “The boy feels betrayed!”

“You of all people are advising me on how Alford feels when he’s left behind?”

“That’s low, Dad.”

“Well, it’s not unearned.”

“I’ll go back inside while you search for him. We’re leaving too early anyhow.”

“Too early! We’re traveling to Maine, not Muncie! Too early. I swear, Savannah, you must believe there’s more sand in your timer than the rest of the world’s combined.”

“I don’t see the rush.”

“The rush is called one thousand miles of highway between you and a jail cell. Yet you’re the patient one!”

“I’m simply saying that if you want to waste the morning chasing a child around the farm, I’ll be inside. It’s your decision. Leaving at noon might not be a bad idea. I would have time to eat a proper breakfast and get my hair in order. You’ve rushed me so much, I look like a common farm girl. Go on and find Alford and I’ll unpack my makeup case.”

“The hell you will!” Grandfather Cody roared. “Get in the passenger seat. If I see you reach for that trunk handle, you’ll need to pay your own lawyer, I promise you that.”

“You win,” my mother said, and I couldn’t see her but I’m sure she winked.

The car doors opened and closed, the steel shivered around me, then the engine roared to life, and we were off.

Two things to know about breathing through a metal tube: Each inhale feels long and each exhale longer. Do it for a hundred miles, and you end up downright relaxed.

The first hour was hell. Once the exhaust began to burn my sinuses, I had another moment of panic and came close to hollering and banging on the trunk lid. I managed to will it down. The faster Grandfather Cody drove, the better it was. The air whipped the exhaust away then, and once we were off the dirt roads and on the paved ones, dust wasn’t as much of an issue. I shifted position, turned onto my side, and drew my knees up to my chest, which loosened the cramp in my lower back. When we hit the highway, the sway of the car steadied. I drank my air through the vacuum tube, but when I pulled it away, jaw aching, I discovered that there was decent airflow in the trunk. I alternated breathing with the vacuum tube and without, eventually finding a rhythm that kept me calm. It was warm and dark and secure in my cramped quarters, and somewhere along the way, impossibly, I fell asleep.

I have no idea where we were when it happened. I’d tried to gauge our progress at first, imagining the map from Indiana to Maine, and I didn’t struggle much to follow the initial steps: down the farm lane, onto the dirt county road, onto the paved highway north, then east. Then I fell asleep, and—much like the sleeping sentries in the Reverend General’s book—I missed the developing disaster entirely.

The vacuum tube, which had been clutched in my left hand and extended through that hole in the bottom of the trunk, slipped from my grasp and fell through the hole onto the highway.

I woke with a jerk and smacked my head on the steel lid of the trunk. The pain cleared the confusion, reminding me of my place and predicament, but it also reignited the fright. Where was my breathing tube?

I felt frantically for it in the darkness. My hands touched the suitcases, the blanket, my canteen, the cover of my grandmother’s book, but no thin brass wand. The only metal that met my palm was the steel that entombed me, and it was everywhere, and the trunk seemed somehow tighter than before. I twisted, writhed, searched. Daylight filtered through the hole I’d used.

I knew it then—the tube was gone.

“Help!” I screamed. I rolled onto my back and beat at the trunk lid with my fists, then added my feet, kicking and pounding and screaming, never considering that if I had enough air for such wailing, I surely could breathe. Panic obscures the reality of the body with the fears of the mind.

The Lincoln swerved, a dangerous fishtail that called up a shriek from the pavement that was followed by the stink of scorched rubber, and I hollered louder, beating at the trunk so violently my bruised knuckles split open and oozed blood. The Lincoln jittered to the right, banged and bounced, slowed, then stopped. I kept screaming and punching and kicking.

Then the lid was up; daylight burned in on me like a prison-yard floodlight, and my grandfather’s astonished, horrified face appeared. Strong hands grabbed me; one arm gathered my still-kicking legs, the other slipped beneath my back, and I was carried like a little child to the side of the highway. My mother splashed water from my own canteen onto my face.

“Calm down, Alford. Just calm down.”

I lay there with my chest heaving and the bright sun harsh in my eyes. It was nearly directly overhead. I’d passed a full morning in the trunk and likely slept through most of it.

“Let me see you, boy,” Grandfather Cody said, his face so stricken with concern that there was no anger—not yet, anyhow. He looked me over, feeling my chest and back with gentle hands, then put two of his big fingers on the side of my neck, then on the inside of my wrist. I was trembling from fright but otherwise fine.

“How’s his pulse?” my mother asked.

“Fine. Fast but steady.”

“His lungs are certainly working.” She passed me the canteen and said, “Drink, Alford.”

While I drank and she consoled me, rubbing my back and murmuring soft assurances, Grandfather Cody walked to the car and stared in the trunk. He took his hat off, bowed his head.

“That is a fine way to die, Alford,” he said at last.

“I had a breathing tube, sir,” I offered weakly, handing the canteen back to my mother. “But I fell asleep and lost it.”

When he returned to me, I saw the bright shimmer in his eyes that matched the look he’d given my grandmother’s empty chair in the parlor.

“I want you to look at that car,” he said, low and soft, “and picture me opening that trunk to find your corpse inside. I want you to do that, really and truly picture it, and then and only then do I want you to look me in the eye, Alford.”

I faced the car. I saw the scene just as he’d described it, him lifting the trunk lid and seeing my blue-lipped dead face. I began to cry before I turned back to him.

“Look at me now,” he demanded.

I did, and that made things worse, much worse. It was so awful to look at those bright blue eyes and see the fear and pain in them and know what I might’ve done to him.

“What matters,” my mother said, calm and cheerful, as if we’d merely taken yet another wrong turn, “is that he’s fine. Oh, I’m not condoning his behavior, of course; don’t look at me like that, Dad. The boy is alive and well. Let us be thankful, not wrathful.”

Grandfather Cody didn’t say anything until I was all cried out.

“I’m sorry,” I said weakly. “I just… I didn’t want to be left behind.”

“It’s my fault,” my mother said. “I should have anticipated such a thing last night when he told me about Fisher’s Hill.”

I looked at her, surprised. She gazed at me without reaction, but her eyes said plenty. “Go on,” she said. “Tell your grandfather what you told me.”

I hesitated, then said, “There’s the part in the book where scouts save the day by hiding in the woods. If they hadn’t hidden, the whole battle would’ve been lost. Maybe the war itself.”

Grandfather Cody stared at me, then looked heavenward and tugged at his mustache. His big chest inflated and he stood with hands on his hips, gazing down the highway.

“I would hate to waste two full days because of a disobedient child, and that’s what it’ll take to bring him back at this point,” my mother said. “Why, he’s as likely to run away from the farm as not. If you ask me—”

“That’s just the thing, Savannah—I haven’t asked you.”

“It’s easier to keep an eye on the child if he’s in the back seat, not another state.”

“A conclusion you’ve reached after twelve years.”

She took the jab without wincing. “That’s because you’ve always had eyes on him. It seems the trouble begins once he’s away from your influence.”

“There are certainly questions of influence,” Grandfather Cody agreed.

She gave a dismissive wave. “Take him home, then. Leave him with Swede. It gives the FBI two more days to work. More power to them.”

Grandfather Cody walked to the trunk, stared down into it, then lifted the leather-bound copy of Lamentations of the Shenandoah. “You brought the book,” he said.

“Yes, sir. And the canteen. That’s all. I was trying to travel light.”

He almost smiled. It passed as quickly as the Packard that roared by then, but I thought it was there.

“Get in the car like a human being instead of a squirrel this time and let me think,” he said. He slammed the trunk lid and went around to the driver’s seat and climbed in. The engine thrummed to life.

I got to my feet, brushed myself off, and glanced at my mother, a question in my eyes.

“You made it far enough that I think you’re safe,” she whispered. “And bringing the book was positively genius. But what on earth was all that wailing about?”

“I lost my breathing tube. I was going to suffocate.”

She sighed. “You weren’t going to suffocate, Alford. I didn’t drill those holes in the car for nothing.”

I stared at her. “Holes?”

“What did you think the blanket was for? I didn’t want him to see that I’d damaged his beloved Lincoln. He’ll be furious when he notices. You’ll have to take the blame for those.”

She made a show of gripping my arm tight and marching me up to the car in her best impersonation of a stern mother. It might’ve convinced someone passing on the highway.

When we drove north toward Cleveland, I was in the back seat as Indiana fell farther behind us.

Victory.

35

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: Any regrets about your vigilante efforts to locate Nickel, Brady, and Dalhover?

Only one, but it’s significant. I had been forming a relationship with Alford, bit by bit. I wanted him along with us. I thought that we might locate Eddie—I had the advantage of knowing about Maine—and I had a dream that the two of them could have at least one conversation together outside of a cell. Now, Dad wasn’t interested in bringing Alford along. He was convinced it was too dangerous. That was what inspired the idea of the boy stowing away.

It worked… but I’ll never forget the moment he began to scream and pound on the trunk. I thought he’d have plenty of air, and I guess he did, but once I heard that sound, I was petrified. I was convinced he was dying, really dying, and even after I saw that he was fine, I was shaken. It seemed like proof of what everyone had always said or whispered about me: I wasn’t fit to be a mother.

If anything changed me on the whole journey, it was that scene on the side of the highway in Ohio. Seeing how scared my son was. Knowing it was my fault, and if anything had happened, well, what kind of woman was I?

I would’ve been just what everyone believed, or worse.

I was never the same after that day, and that’s a good thing. If you weren’t about to kill me, I could argue that I might be capable of learning to be a mother after all. I’m not certain… but I think so. I was changing so much by the mile on that trip. My mother’s voice was always in my ear, and that was exasperating but necessary.

Then I’d look in the rearview mirror and see my son looking at me. He was looking at me in a different way. The night after my mother’s funeral, when I read him the story before bed, he stared at me like I was a stranger. By the time we crossed the New York state line, he was seeing a friend, at least. An ally.

But he wasn’t seeing a mother. What kind of mother suggests a boy lock himself in the trunk of a car?

I looked into his eyes and felt the worst guilt I’d ever felt, worse even than the night at the Willard Hotel, because, after all, I hadn’t pulled any triggers that day. I’d just driven the car. The guilt was a wonderful thing for me, awful as it was, because I was feeling the way I always should have: protective of my son.

I can see the contempt in your eyes, and that’s fine. I may not deserve death, but I deserve contempt for the first twelve years I was a mother.

I could be a good one now, though. I really could. I love that child, and I could change for him. He could change me, is a better way of saying it.

He already has.

Toland: Why did you allow the stops in New York and Vermont if you were so sure Nickel was in Maine?

Not much interest in my potential as a mother, I guess. Okay. I allowed the stops because I wasn’t certain that Eddie would be in Maine and because my father was driving the car. He was an excellent detective. It was interesting to watch him work, to think the way he did. But there’s another thing: I didn’t mind going slow, for once.

Toland: Why not?

Because we were becoming a family. A strange version of one, I’ll grant you that, but it was just the three of us on the road and we were getting to know one another. It was a different life than any I’d known before. I enjoyed it. I sparred with Dad as I always had, but there wasn’t the intrusion of my mother—although her presence was a strong thing in that Lincoln. Now, though, Alford was in the mix. So bright and so attentive and with so many questions. He has such a wonderful spirit.

The best days of my life were the days in the summer of 1937 when we made our trip together from Indiana to Maine, three generations of the Cody family. I’ll never ask Alford to take any surname but his father’s—Dad was right about that—but we felt like a family. We were all wayward in our own style. We got along fine, despite the circumstances.

Strange as it must be for a man like you to consider, those were good days.

Then came Saratoga, and everything changed, sped up. I wanted time to pass slowly, but Al Brady had other ideas.

36

NICKEL

FOURTH OF JULY 1937, and the heat didn’t rise with the sun.

That seemed cruel on a summer holiday in upstate New York, Saratoga Springs still lush green with memories of four feet of snowmelt that had watered the ground after a relentless winter. The town had earned a day of short sleeves and skirts, but instead of heat shimmers on the pavement, there was frost on the grass when Nickel strolled up Broadway, past the Adirondack Trust and back to the Adelphi Hotel.

Three police officers were on the street, but none paid him any mind, because they were busy putting up barricades for the parade. A band was warming up in the park east of Broadway—the high blare of a trumpet, the lower swoon of a trombone worked through the slide. Laughter and shouts from folks carrying picnic baskets to the park; a boy cackled and a girl screamed as a squirt gun was deployed.

Nickel watched from the veranda of the Adelphi with a cup of coffee in his cold hand, his eyes returning again and again to the bank building just up the street.

He was always the first one up in the morning. Even hungover, he was the first of the gang to rise, and today he was cold sober; everyone would be. Al Brady had gone to bed early, and Nickel noticed he hadn’t allowed himself a single whiskey. Tense. Not showing it—not unless you knew him well—but undeniably tense.

And why not? You could rob a hundred small banks and jewelry stores and gas stations, as Brady had by now, and still not be quite ready to bust into the Adirondack Trust and deal with guards and then blow a vault door off with dynamite, all of this in the heart of a strange town on the Fourth of fucking July.

Nickel by now had the maps clear in his mind. He’d fallen asleep early and woken up in the wee hours, predawn, knowing immediately that sleep was gone for good, the way it abandoned you when something heavy was coming. He turned on the desk lamp and went through exercises with route planning, eyes closed and then opened to check his memory against the map. He imagined the best scenario first: down Broadway, left on Lake, out to Route 9, a clear shot south. Now imagine that Lake Avenue was blocked. What was the next option?

Eyes closed again, envisioning the maps, escape routes tracking right to left, Nickel seeing it all like a center fielder chasing a high looping line drive smacked in fading light. A U-turn on Broadway, gun it north instead of south, bang a right on Division to pick up Route 9 southbound or pass Division and take High Rock Avenue and keep riding north. All this depended on the police at his back, of course, but he preferred north to south because Albany and its various law enforcement agencies waited in the south, while the Adirondack Mountains loomed to the north.

Way he had it figured, there would be a kind of poetry to the day. They’d start it by robbing the Adirondack Trust and end it by hiding in the same mountains that had given the bank its name. There were a hundred dirt lanes in the Adirondacks, old timber cuts and mining access roads, all hidden beneath tall, crowded pines that shielded you fast. There would be empty cabins of all flavors out there, summer lodges not yet opened by the city folk, run-down sites that trappers used in the winter and left in the summer, maybe an abandoned still from the Canadian moonshine days. Once he was in those mountains, Nickel wasn’t worried about getting out of sight. He’d always been comfortable in the woods.

It was getting there that scared him.

The horns blared again, louder now, the opening lines of a marching tune, a snare drum snapping along. Everyone was getting ready. More people were appearing in the street by the minute, most of them dressed to the nines and headed for the trolley cars that would take them out of town. The best part of Al Brady’s plan was picking a spot that emptied out so thoroughly on the holiday. Saratoga Springs was the hub for two major lakes, and on the Fourth of July, the parties were held at the lakes. This morning rush would build for the parade, then die off, people scattering to the lakes and to Congress Park for the evening fireworks, and Broadway would be quiet.

Until the vault door blew.

He lifted the coffee, found it was empty. Easy, now. Wouldn’t do to get too caffeinated. Energy was good; anxiety was not. It was too damn cold for July, that was the problem.

Nickel was already buzzing with tension, and when the others finally emerged, he saw that they were too. Dalhover tried to be cool, smoking his cigarette and putting his feet up on the rail, cocky. Clarence Shaffer couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands; they were in his pockets, on the table, around his coffee cup, then back in his pockets. Al Brady, he read the paper.

Nickel couldn’t help but smile at that, knowing that Al was already picturing tomorrow’s edition, seeing his mug on the front page, above the fold. Headline hunters abounded these days, from gangsters to G-men. Every one of them was like a horn player, needing to be loud, be noticed, be fuckin’ famous. America: Land of the Free, Home of Notice Me.

Was a time when it had been enough to live a quiet life, know your neighbors. Nickel wondered what had changed it so fast. Cars had something to do with it, making the big country smaller, but it was information that mattered, the speed of a story, that was how fame happened. In the old days, that took a while. You had to live a life, let the story be written, true or bullshit, and the writing took some time, and even then word had to spread. Davy Crockett wasn’t truly famous until he was dead. Johnnie Dillinger, he’d gotten there a hell of a lot faster. He was just as dead as Crockett, sure, but he’d gotten famous fast, and this country loved fame. Radios and television and movies and the daily newspapers, so damned many of them, a morning and an afternoon edition, two or three competing papers in the same city as if there were really that many stories that mattered. There weren’t. It was everyone talking over everyone else, saying the same fucking thing, like the words didn’t count unless it came out of their own mouths, all of them imagining their starring roles in the story of the world, even though the world didn’t know most of them existed and certainly didn’t care.

Nickel wondered whether that was the price of the Depression. In those years, staying fed was hard and getting rich was nearly impossible, but getting famous? Why, you could do that overnight.

Right now, Al Brady was a famous man. Public enemy number one. Dalhover and Shaffer and even Nickel, they were known men, no matter that Al got most of the credit, had his name in the headlines while the others were in the small print.

But how long would it last? There would always be the legends—Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Baby Face Nelson. And Dillinger, without a doubt.

Al Brady, though? The rest of them at the veranda table?

Nickel wasn’t so sure. Becoming public enemy number one was something. Staying there… that was the test. If you stayed there long enough, someone would show up to retell your story. Even if that person was mostly full of shit, you just had to hang on to be remembered.

Or go out in one hell of a bloody blaze of glory, he thought, but that kind of notion wasn’t helpful today, so he put it out of his mind.

They ate breakfast, checked their watches, tried to find something to talk about. Time limped by. Church bells rang, parishioners filed down the sidewalks. Fourth of July, sure, but it was still Sunday, and that mattered to good, God-fearing folks who didn’t have machine guns in the trunks of their cars. The waiter came by often, annoying Brady, who said they were fine, just waiting on the parade.

“Going to be a long wait in this cold,” the smartly dressed, bow-tie-wearing, grin-a-minute waiter responded, not taking the hint. “Should call it the Frost of July!”

“Funny,” Brady said, and lifted the newspaper again, a pointed gesture, one step short of telling the guy to beat feet.

“Do you think they’ll find them?” the waiter said, still standing there holding his steaming coffee carafe.

Nickel felt the cold then in a way he hadn’t before, and Dalhover lowered his feet from the railing, his hand drifting ever so slowly toward his waistband. Brady didn’t lower the newspaper or respond, but Clarence said, “Find who?”

The waiter nodded at the front page that was shielding public enemy number one from view.

“Amelia Earhart and her navigator.”

There she was on the front page, the aviatrix, as the headline termed her, smiling boldly at the camera. She’d been missing for two days now.

“Went down somewhere in the South Pacific,” the waiter said. “They’re organizing the biggest search in history. The navy is sending ships from the Philippines.”

“Paul McNutt will fix it,” Nickel said, and this startled everyone; even Al Brady lowered the paper and peered at him.

“What’s that?”

“He runs things in the Philippines,” Nickel said. “Used to be governor of Indiana.”

Brady looked at him like he was considering spending the day’s first bullet on Nickel right there at the breakfast table.

“I hope you’re right,” the waiter said, and finally took his leave.

“The hell you talking so much for?” Dalhover said.

“A damn good question,” Brady added.

Nickel shrugged. The police were right below them now, stringing red-white-and-blue flags on a long cord to block off the street where the parade route would pass. Time seemed to have thickened like early-season syrup.

“Maybe we should go to church,” Nickel said.

“You lost your mind?” Dalhover asked.

“Getting restless, is all.”

“Take a fuckin’ nap, then,” Brady said. “Or go to church. Hell, I don’t care, just shut up.”

Nickel said he was going to stretch his legs, then walked down to Congress Park, where the town’s famous springs geysered up in fountains and glistened in pools. He wandered through the crowd and listened to the mayor read the Declaration of Independence, after which a high-school quartet sang, their voices a little rough on “My country, ’tis of thee” but then settling. Nickel figured singing in front of a crowd was like robbing a bank: You calmed down once the glass broke.

By the time he got back, the others were drinking.

“Hell, we can have one beer,” Brady said, reading his expression. “Wouldn’t look right if we didn’t.”

There was a certain kind of logic to that. Nickel drank an Irish cream ale, then a second, because what harm was two beers if you’d already had one? The parade came and went and the crowd began to thin. Chairs were folded up and picnic baskets gathered and blankets slung over the shoulders of shivering girls in thin dresses. Police moved sawhorses out of the way. Patrol cars headed north toward the lakes. Crowd control. Everyone had somewhere else to be. Good.

It was time.

They walked to where the Ford was parked three blocks away. The town had gone eerily quiet now, although Nickel’s ears were still ringing from the brass band and the marching songs. He got behind the wheel.

“Park right in front,” Brady said like Nickel might have forgotten the operation.

Broadway was a ghost town now, forgotten paper flags blowing like tumbleweeds down the empty street. He had his choice of parking spots, took the one right at the front door, and cut the engine. Looked down the street, then into the rearview mirror. No police.

“There will be a guard,” Brady said. He was sitting in the passenger seat, Dalhover and Clarence in the back. “Jimmy and I will go up to the door, bang the hell out of it, make a real ruckus, saying our nephew got lost in the parade. All we need is to get them to open the door. Then we’re going through it one way or the other. We’ll keep it open while Clarence brings in the blasting tools. Nickel, you come in last. See any cops, put them down fast.”

Nickel, who’d never yet shot a police officer, merely nodded, but a voice somewhere in the back of his head whispered the words he’d thought that morning on the veranda: Land of the Free, Home of Notice Me.

Die famous.

Sure.

“All right,” Brady said. “Time to make some memories for Saratoga Springs.”

With that, he opened the door and stepped onto the sidewalk.

It felt strange, pulling a Yegg job, as safecracking was known, in broad daylight. Nickel had been in plenty of midday robberies—they were the rule rather than the exception—but this one felt upside down; it was noon downtown and yet the place was empty. He could feel the pulse in his leg near the bullet wound. He faced forward but watched the side mirror.

Brady banged on the bank door, put his hands over his eyes, peered through the glass, shouted a hello. Dalhover made a show of looking up and down the street like he was nervously searching for a kid. Brady carried on, waving his hands and gesturing up the street and tearing his hat off in a wild show of frustration, shouting, “Have you seen my kid? Have you? He’s about this tall?” He held his palm at waist level, the kind of gesture that would hit any father in the gut, imagining a child that small being lost.

The big glass door opened and a guard in a gray uniform leaned out, concern etched on his face; he probably had two little ones at home and knew just how Al was feeling. He was a big guy, towered over Brady and Dalhover, and had broad shoulders and a thick chest and a gun on his belt.

“I’m sorry, mister, but I haven’t been facing the street,” he said, and that was when Brady drew his handgun and stuck it in the guard’s belly.

The guard, he didn’t flinch. Didn’t react much at all, only looked down and registered the weapon, then looked back at Brady’s face like he was seeing him for the first time. It was hard to tell in the mirror, but Nickel thought he saw recognition.

Brady said something low, the guard stepped back, and Dalhover kept the door propped open. Broadway was still empty, although Nickel could hear laughter coming from somewhere close by. He got out of the car, went around back, and unlocked the trunk. Clarence, too nervous, immediately grabbed both the bag with the dynamite sticks and the bag with the blasting caps, leaving nothing for Nickel to carry. Nickel grabbed the Thompson before he closed the trunk. He’d worked hard getting it in smooth firing shape, so why not?

As they hustled into the bank, Dalhover glanced at the machine gun and said, “Smart.”

Which was how Nickel knew he’d made a mistake. Approval from Dalhover, the mad dog.

Inside, he heard the guard say, “You’re Al Brady.” Then he looked at Nickel, the way a guard tended to when a man was carrying a machine gun. Nickel didn’t like his eyes; something in the tall blond man’s calm said he’d seen shooting before and didn’t fear it the way most did. Nickel swung the heavy muzzle of the Thompson up and let it rest on the guard’s face. The Thompson won the staring contest.

The guard put his hands up. Then, after wetting his lips, he whispered, “Wrong bank, fellas. I’m telling you, tie me up, go on down the road, and hit Saratoga County. They’ve got cash on hand, no guards on duty today, and the vault’s about as secure as an icebox. Go there.”

Something in his voice, a tone closer to warning than begging, gave Nickel pause—or would’ve given him pause if Brady hadn’t backhanded the guard in the face with his pistol, breaking the man’s nose and spraying blood onto the polished marble floors. The big guy put both hands to his face, which let Brady grab his gun, cat-quick, and he passed it to Dalhover, so he was now holding a pistol in each hand. Nickel glanced back at the street. A group of teenagers were walking up—they must’ve been the laughers—two boys and two girls, everyone with an ice cream cone.

They guided the bleeding guard into the shadows of the closed building, and the teens on the sidewalk passed by without so much as a glance inside the bank. They had no interest in it; their money could be contained in a pocket. Nickel remembered those days. He’d held suitcases of cash and bags of jewels in the years since then, and yet the only people in this town he envied were the kids with a few coins in their pockets and laughter on their lips.

You couldn’t go back to that. No bank in the world held enough money for you to do that.

“Let’s get to the vault,” Dalhover said.

“I don’t have the combination,” the guard said through the muffle of a bloody nose and hands covering his mouth.

“That’s fine,” Brady said. “We do.”

37

NICKEL

THE GUARD LED them across the lobby, his blood bright against the white marble. So much marble in the place—exterior and interior, floors and counters and stairs. Above them, the desks of the bankers themselves, probably the president and vice president, were positioned to look down on every customer who walked through the door. Carved into the high stone wall behind those polished desks, legible only once you were past the chandelier, was the motto FRUGALITY IS THE MOTHER OF ALL VIRTUES.

Nickel wanted to stitch a line of bullets into it with the Thompson. Imagine the balls of bankers commissioning that fucking slogan, then positioning it up above, where the royalty sat and the rich could mingle while looking down on the peasants who entered the marble hall—if the rich could squint past the glare of the chandelier and see the peasants at all. For the first time since they’d arrived in Saratoga Springs, Nickel was glad they’d picked this bank. He was ready to blow that vault wide open and leave it smoking. Keep your fucking frugality, boys; we’ll just take the cash.

They were approaching a glossy, shoulder-high counter wall—marble, of course. To the left of it was a security gate and directly behind it the vault. The vault wasn’t hidden in a closed office or in a basement at the Adirondack Trust. Rather, it loomed as the visual centerpiece of the expansive room, like a promise—or a taunt.

The guard stopped at the gate. Said, “I’ll need to use my keys.” His voice sounded like it was coming from underwater, squeezed by his swelling nose.

“Then use them,” Al Brady said. “But you touch a button, boss? Issue a silent alarm to that police station across the street? Your wife and kids will have mighty bad memories of the Fourth of July for the rest of their lives. That will forever be the day Daddy died, you follow?”

“There’s no—”

“The hell there isn’t,” Brady snarled, low and cold. “Bank like this, there is a silent alarm, you bet your bleeding ass there is, and I’m here to tell you, you got one chance to stay alive. Make the right choice.”

The guard lowered one bloody hand to his belt, removed a key ring, and unlocked the gate. Nickel had the sudden thought that since it was Sunday and the bank was closed, the alarm could be wired into the gate itself, triggered by any opening, because no one should be walking behind the teller counter today. He tensed, listening, then felt foolish. They called it a silent alarm for a reason.

Brady and Dalhover and Shaffer passed through the open gate. Nickel took a look around, the muzzle of the Thompson tracing an arc over the windows, but Broadway was silent. Shadows danced over the marble from the American flags flapping above the bank. He lowered the machine gun and went behind the counter with the rest of them.

The vault was massive, its door taller than Nickel and broader than Brady and Dalhover standing side by side. The brand name, DIEBOLD, was stamped on a brass plaque. The locking mechanism protruded from the center: a dial, a handle, and a bolt. Nickel couldn’t help being impressed by the mechanical work. It was a beautiful beast of simple engineering. The door alone probably cost more than most men made in a year.

They all stood facing it, four Hoosiers with guns and one New Yorker with a bloody nose, and everyone seemed temporarily impressed, if not daunted.

“Time locked,” the guard gurgled. “I can’t open it. Go on and hit Saratoga County. I’m telling you, it’s nothing like this.”

“Shut up,” Brady said, then he looked at young Clarence Shaffer and asked, “Can you do it?”

Clarence had gone pale, but he nodded.

“Just like blasting limestone, right?” Dalhover said, trying to be encouraging, but Nickel couldn’t stand that bullshit.

“It’s nothing like blasting limestone. That door is steel, probably eight inches or a foot thick, and we don’t have time for extra tries at it.”

“You go through the dial,” Clarence said softly.

“You’ve done that?” Brady asked.

“No. But I jailed with a guy from Oklahoma named Stick Leonard, he was a pro at Yegg jobs, one of the best. He told me all about it. You drill here.” Clarence tapped a spot above the dial and locking mechanism. “It’s thinner back behind that plate because you need space for all the lock works. Pack that with dynamite and blow it, and the spindle shaft cracks.”

“Well,” Brady said, “let’s get to it.”

Clarence set down his bags and picked out a drill. It was a heavy-duty hand-cranked job outfitted with a breast plate so the operator could leverage his full body weight into the task.

“I hope you brought extra bits,” Nickel said. “That door will chew a drill bit like it’s Wrigley’s gum.”

“I got plenty.”

They let Clarence go to work. With the chest pad, he could lean against the drill and crank with one hand while using the other to guide the bit. Within a few minutes, he was soaked in sweat, and steel shavings lined the white marble floor like pencil lead on snow.

“Attaboy,” Brady said, but he wasn’t watching Clarence; he was watching the street. Cars came and went but none slowed. The big clock in the lobby ticked off the minutes. If the silent alarm had been engaged by the gate, as Nickel feared, they’d have known it by now. Or would they? Could police be taking positions all around the exterior at this moment, snipers just waiting, seeing no need to rush the place like it was the damned Alamo, knowing that the robbers would have to walk out at some point, easy targets? Maybe.

“I’m telling you,” the guard said again, watching Clarence bore slowly but efficiently through the vault door, “go on and hit Saratoga County.”

Nickel wondered what this fellow had against his compatriots at the Saratoga County Bank. Maybe they’d fired him there. They would probably fire him here. It was hard to stay employed as a bank guard after you’d lost all the bank’s money.

Clarence was panting like a thoroughbred on the homestretch now, sweat dripping off his chin and souping the steel shavings at his feet. The screech of the drill bit, steel on steel, sounded as loud as a train whistle in the empty bank, with its hard surfaces in every direction. Nickel shifted the Thompson, bounced it in his palms, trying to stay calm.

The drill bit dulled, and Clarence swapped it out for another. Dalhover offered to spell him, but Clarence shook his head. Nickel had never much trusted the kid, but he admired his effort today.

The guard edged a few steps back. Brady said, “Stay,” like he was talking to a puppy. The guard stayed. He’d taken his hands away from his face, and the blood had stopped flowing; his nose was knocked sideways, inflated into a purple knot of tissue. He caught Nickel’s eye, not a glare so much as an imploring look. You knew you were having a hell of a bad day when the guy holding the machine gun struck you as the reasonable one.

“I know,” Nickel said, “we should’ve hit Saratoga County.”

Clarence sweated and drilled, grunted and drilled, gasped and drilled, every sound seeming louder than anything the parade had offered. Nickel tried to keep his eyes off the clock, busied himself with remembering the escape routes. South to Lake, then left. If that was blocked, north to Division or High Rock. Find Route 9, get into the mountains. Yes, north on 9, that was the line, easy to remember, jazz, north on 9, north on 9, north on—

Click.

It was the quietest noise of the past half hour, and yet it was the first one to freeze everyone. Because it was different. The shriek of metal on metal and Clarence’s accompanying rhythm section of grunts and gasps had become familiar. This sound, faint but distinct, like the cap being snapped off a soda bottle, was not part of the soundtrack.

“Fuck was that?” Dalhover said, and Nickel was aware of the guard edging back again. He didn’t look that way, though. He kept his eyes on the vault door.

“Pull the bit,” he said, low and hard.

Clarence wiggled the drill left to right, stepped back, and cleared it from the hole. A high hiss came, as if the vault were warning them, the way a snake might.

“What is it?” Brady said.

Nobody answered. There was another soft popping sound, this one clearer, like a light bulb bursting, glass and air.

A thin white mist emerged from the drill hole like exhaled cigarette smoke.

The bank guard ran for it then. Nickel caught him by the back of his shirt as he scrambled up on the counter, trying to clear it, and hauled him back down. The thin line of mist had turned rapidly into a fog, the air poisoned with an acrid smell of slowly melting tires, stinging the eyes and the back of the throat.

“Tear gas,” the guard said, gasping, looking up at Nickel from the floor. “It’s a tear-gas trap. I tried to tell you.”

Al Brady stepped forward and clubbed the guard on the head with his pistol. Once, twice, three times, the last one a direct shot to that already broken nose, and the guard stayed down as the tear gas bloomed in a seemingly endless supply, filling the room, the cloud reaching out and up, making that slogan—FRUGALITY IS THE MOTHER OF ALL VIRTUES—impossible to read through watering, burning eyes.

“We gotta get the fuck out of here!” Dalhover shouted.

Clarence Shaffer seemed to agree, but Al Brady whirled and grabbed Clarence’s throat with one hand and shouted, “Finish it!”

Brady took out a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to Clarence’s face. The boy’s eyes were streaming with tears. He stared at Brady, then reached down, holding the handkerchief to his face, and came up with a stick of dynamite in his hand. Nickel retreated at the sight of it, back through the security gate and out into the lobby. It was easier breathing out here, but it wouldn’t be for long. The fucking gas just kept coming, a rising white cloud. Nickel gagged, choked, spat. Nothing could clear it. His eyelids spasmed. He pulled his shirt over his nose. He’d heard of tear-gas traps but had never encountered one. It was worse than he could have imagined. On the other side of the smoke cloud, Clarence Shaffer was trying to plug the half-drilled hole with a stick of dynamite. Dalhover gave up, jumped the teller’s counter, ran to join Nickel by the door. Al Brady stood there in the thick of it, elbow covering his nose, somehow willing himself to remain at the safe. The air was too dense with tear gas for Nickel to make out what they were doing anymore, and he couldn’t force his eyes to stay open—they kept squeezing shut of their own accord. He stumbled to the door, thinking he had to open it, it was open the door or die, that simple, that urgent, but before he could do that Al Brady screamed, “Run!”

The dynamite went off with a concussion wave that rocked the lobby front to back and then seemed to sweep through for a second pass. The force knocked Nickel to his knees, and the glass windows blew out of the lobby and into the street, sprinkling the sidewalks with shards. The tear gas chased the open air, and by the time Nickel got upright, he could haul in a breath. It tasted like the inside of a gasoline tank, but it filled his lungs. Sirens were going off now, a clamor that added to the chaos, but his ears were ringing and it all seemed to be happening far away. He picked up the machine gun, looked back at the teller counter, and saw the vault door was open.

Clarence had done it.

But where was Clarence?

Nickel ran back across the lobby toward the tear gas—how was there so much in that damn thing; when would it empty?—and when he reached the teller counter, he discovered Clarence hunkered down behind it. Al Brady was inside the vault.

“Come on!” Brady screamed.

Nickel vomited onto the marble counter, saw blood mixed with the bile, then heaved himself up and over the counter and went into the vault.

Visibility was near zero inside; it was like entering a mine shaft with a dimming lamp. The long rows of shelving were buckled near the door, where the blast had gone off, but intact in the rear. Nickel blinked and pawed at his eyes, trying desperately to clear them enough to see what the hell he could steal. Loose papers drifted in the air, some bills among the ledger pages, and metal safety boxes lined the shelves.

Al Brady was crouched down, stuffing handfuls of cash into the canvas sack he’d had folded in his jacket pocket. While Nickel watched, Brady doubled over, jetted a geyser of vomit onto the floor, then kept sweeping up money. Nickel joined him, grabbing the bills blind, jamming them into his pockets until they bulged. He worked with one hand only, refusing to relinquish the Thompson. Dalhover and Shaffer were in the vault now, everyone grabbing what they could.

“Time to go,” Nickel said.

Brady either agreed or was too sick to hang in any longer. He took his sack and ran. He was shooting when he hit the street—maybe before he hit it. Dalhover and Shaffer were right behind him. Nickel came last, still pawing at his burning eyes, and then his foot caught on something and he went down.

It was the bank guard. The man’s jacket was smoldering, and his pulped face was turned up, exposed to the gas. Dead. Should be left—why not? Then some force beyond Nickel’s own will made him reach out and touch the man’s throat. It required dropping the Thompson, but he did it.

Pulse, slow but steady, beneath his fingertips.

Nickel grabbed the man by his burning coat and hauled him through the buckled remains of the security gate, thinking that the guard had told them to hit Saratoga County, and they should’ve listened. He dragged him into the center of the lobby, where the smoke was dissipating in the breeze from the blown-out windows, and there he left him.

He stepped out of the bank through a hole where a window had been, emerging from a cloud of acrid smoke, blinking and squinting up the street toward the police station. Sirens blared but he couldn’t see anyone. He could scarcely see the building. Gunshots cracked, bullets met brick, maybe fired by Brady and Dalhover, maybe fired by cops—who the hell could tell?

Too late, he realized he’d left the Thompson. The big gun was their best security, the one they needed now more than ever, but when he whirled back to the bank, the wind shifted and blew gas into his eyes as bullets hit the stone, pieces of the building chipping free around him. Nickel staggered to the car, saw the others were already in it. Its passenger-side windows had blown out with the blast, but the windshield was intact save for a single S-curved crack. Nickel dropped behind the wheel, knowing he couldn’t see well enough to drive even as he got the Ford started and shifted into gear.

He floored it toward his tears.

They careened down the street. Driving into the wind was helpful, clarifying his vision a little bit, like someone wiping a hand across a frosted window. Red lights loomed in his tears. Police.

The U-turn he made was as good as a blind man could make it, the Ford swerving around and the steering wheel and tires talking to him through his hands, telling him when they’d come around 180 degrees or close to it, and then his foot was back on the gas, heavy, the V-8 growling with delight. Someone in the back seat was shooting. Or maybe someone was shooting at the back seat. It was probably both. Nickel, he just blinked and drove, thinking, North to 9, north to 9, north to 9 and we’ll be just fine.

It was like handling a boat in the fog, the buildings around him only dim shapes. He took one hand off the wheel and wiped frantically at his eyes and this time it finally helped a bit, got his vision clear enough that he saw the street sign that said HIGH ROCK AVENUE.

That was the one.

“Gimme the Thompson,” Brady said, but Nickel wasn’t holding the Thompson, it was back in the bank beside the dying guard, so who the hell was Al talking to? Didn’t matter, because a second later, Al was half in, half out of the car, and the big gun was chattering. The sirens didn’t stop, but they faded. In the blur ahead, that terrain of tears, Nickel saw a highway.

Then the gas residue rose again, maybe coming up from within him, maybe blown off Brady. Nickel choked, coughed, swerved. They were off the road, Brady shouting as Nickel steered back to the left. The tires kissed the pavement again. He blinked, found a gray corridor against green edging in his tears. The highway. Hold the gray, live another day.

He drove north.

38

ALFORD

WE SPENT THE last week of June on the road. Little towns along Lake Erie—Ashtabula, Conneaut, Geneva-on-the-Lake—and then into New York, tracing Lake Ontario now, Oswego, Charlotte, Fairhaven. They were beautiful places, although you could feel the damage of the past decade in them. For a twelve-year-old boy, though, each new village held its own fascination.

Particularly because most of our research was conducted in taverns.

I had never been allowed inside a tavern before. During my grandmother’s life, it was simply impossible for me to imagine. Now she was gone and my mother had returned, and taverns were no longer forbidden but familiar.

Each spot—or “joint,” as my mother called them—was different yet the same, smelling of sweat and beer and smoke. In some you picked up more smoke from cigars or pipes than cigarettes. Those were, I determined by the time we passed Niagara Falls, the “classier” joints. Grandfather Cody’s rule, now that I was traveling with them, was that we visited joints only before five p.m. What happened there after five p.m. kept me awake with wild imaginings.

Two things occurred in this stretch: I became enamored with my mother and intrigued by my grandfather. The former was fairly logical. I’d not spent enough time with her in my life to see how easily she interacted with everyone, men and women alike, all ages and backgrounds. “She does have charm” was the way Grandfather Cody put it, a weariness to the compliment that I believed I understood, and yet it was still remarkable to watch. We’d pull into a joint just after lunch, walk out of the sun and into the dim room, and immediately know whether the place got mostly highway travelers or was dependent on regular customers. The latter group tended to be suspicious or downright hostile—for about five minutes. That’s how long it took my mother to get the bartender or a waitress or a random pair of old-timers with sour expressions to open up.

Her secret was an utterly unflappable self-confidence. She walked into a room as if she’d never met a moment of doubt in her entire life. Once engaged in conversation, she pretended to be oblivious to any negative social cues, acting as if she didn’t comprehend a scowl, smirk, or sigh, pressing on until she got the first opportunity to throw her head back and laugh.

When she laughed, everyone’s defenses folded. Fast and forever. I’d never heard a laugh like hers before and I haven’t since, so genuine. It wasn’t a beautiful sound—I’m not even sure it was pretty—but it was authentic. There is something compelling about an adult who laughs as a young child does, with unbridled delight. Even children soon learn to guard their laughter, having been told that it’s too loud or comes at the wrong moment, chastised for joy. My mother laughed as if the world were a source of relentless amusement, and people laughed with her easily. If they didn’t laugh, they at least smiled. If they didn’t smile, they tolerated. She could work the room one way or the other.

More than a few men tried to buy her drinks. She never allowed it. Watching these exchanges, I had a better idea of why our visits were conducted before five p.m.

While my mother battered the Great Lakes with a charm offensive not seen since Ginger Rogers, I sat at my grandfather’s elbow and saw a side of the man I’d never known. He saw everything, which was not a revelation—I’d always understood him to be observant—but he’d never explained the process to me. After we left a joint, he’d sit in the car and sketch the interior of the place with remarkable detail. The sketches looked much like the one my father had left on the wall of his jail cell in Indiana.

“The Burns method,” Grandfather Cody explained. “Way we were trained: See it, notice the detail, and be able to recall it visually. You set that pathway in the brain by sketching. Some people say that’s nonsense, but they haven’t tried it. You remember more if you put it down by hand. Writing is good; drawing is better.”

I tried it. My efforts were labored and I was proud of them—until we compared notes. He had always recorded a dozen things I’d missed. The fish on the wall was a walleye; the jukebox was broken; the dustpan was hung beside the closet on a nail rather than placed inside the closet with the broom. On and on.

“What matters about all that silly detail?” my mother asked once, lighting a cigarette.

“Most of the time, probably nothing. But one day, in one place, it will matter. You don’t know when or where, but I guarantee you’ll miss it unless you’ve trained yourself to observe.”

I asked him if he had ever used an alias, excited by the notion of a secret identity. Grandfather Cody conceded that he’d had to use a few different names on undercover assignments, and I selected Dan Hyland as my own. I felt guilty, stealing it from the book character, but it was the role I wanted to play—crack the case, then tell the story.

Upon arrival in a new town, Grandfather Cody familiarized himself with three institutions immediately: the post office, the newspaper offices, and the railroad station.

“Learn what’s moving and who’s watching,” he said. “Don’t get distracted talking to police, who often know less than they pretend to and never want to get into details unless they have a reason to view you as an ally. But the pressman at a newspaper, the station attendant at a railroad depot, the clerk at the post office? They see it all. They know the routine of the town, what moves in and moves out, and they’re the folks most likely to spot anyone or anything that doesn’t fit the pattern. That means even the inattentive ones can hardly help but notice a stranger.”

“Doesn’t that mean they’ll notice you?” my mother asked.

“Sure. But I’m not worried about being followed.”

At each new joint, he got out of the car in the exact same fashion, unfolding to his full height, that posture that called to mind the starring actor in a Western, and gazed first at the lake, then at the joint. He was assessing, he said, whether any of it matched the sketch in my father’s cell. Most of them did not. As we progressed farther northeast, the hills swelled into mountains, closer to the sketch on the cell wall.

Father and daughter maintained a truce, their bickering good-natured, and it was easy to believe my mother didn’t have a court date pending. Then came the Fourth of July and a shootout in a town called Saratoga Springs.

The Brady Gang had struck the Adirondack Trust. They’d blown open the bank vault, made off with a haul reported to be greater than a hundred thousand dollars, and left a savagely beaten guard to almost asphyxiate in tear gas. He was in the hospital, and doctors were unsure if he’d survive. He had identified my father as the sole gang member armed with a machine gun.

That night, we had a silent dinner and listened to J. Edgar Hoover promise the men would be tracked, caught, and killed for their crimes, whether the instrument of death be a lawman’s bullet or the electric chair. He also promised prosecution to the fullest extent of the law for anyone who aided or abetted the gangsters.

My mother and I played gin rummy in a cramped motel room while my grandfather spoke to Fred Priest, our new lawyer, on the pay phone in the parking lot. When he was finished, he summoned my mother outside. I watched through the blinds as he talked and she paced, pausing now and then for bitter, unamused laughter that sounded nothing like the laughter she used to warm up a barroom.

“Even from the other side of the grave, she’ll keep making her point,” she said loudly as she turned from him, and Grandfather Cody bowed his head.

The next morning, we proceeded northeast, and the car was silent.

In a tiny town called Sackets Harbor, we stopped at a joint called Risko’s. A long, L-shaped bar ran along one wall, and a few booths lined the opposite wall. There was a low stage at the back of the building, empty now but probably home to a band on the weekends. More windows, smaller than the ones in front, presented a view of the green hills above the town.

A half a dozen patrons sat at the bar and there was one older couple in a booth, splitting a single piece of pie. Everyone glanced at us, the reflexive way people do when someone enters a small space, but none of the looks were hostile.

“Sit where you like,” the bartender said. He was a thin man with a mustache and slicked-back hair, a bar rag draped over his shoulder like he’d been born with it.

My mother took a bar stool and I instinctively moved for the one beside her.

“Sit with your grandfather, Alford,” she said. “We’re on separate tabs.”

I didn’t understand. Grandfather Cody led me to a booth in the far corner of the room. The bartender drifted our way and Grandfather Cody ordered cheeseburgers and Coca-Colas, and then the man was off quickly, finding my mother’s company more interesting.

“What happened?” I asked. “What did she mean, we’re on separate tabs?”

“Nothing,” Grandfather Cody said, then hesitated. “I need to stop treating you like this, don’t I? You want to know the truth. I ought to tell you.”

He seemed to be talking to himself as much as to me.

“She’s making a point,” he continued. “Or she thinks she is. Your grandmother’s estate is the issue, Alford.”

I said, “But it’s your money now. You could give it to her. I mean, you could spend it however you want.”

His gaze sharpened, and on an ordinary day he would have questioned me—and broken me—quickly. Today, though, his mind was elsewhere, so he took my knowledge in stride, surmising that I’d made a reasonable guess.

“No, I cannot,” he said. “The money is in a complex trust, Alford, one that your grandmother set up years ago. I never cared. Not from the first day I met her to the last did I ever care about one dime. My lack of interest in the money is one of the things that…”

He paused. Studied me. His lined face seeming to age even in the seconds that passed.

“There was a lot of concern about money in the Winter family,” he said. “That was understandable, because they had plenty. I didn’t care about the money. I cared for your grandmother. I said as much to her parents, but there were those who had doubts, and… well, I doubled down to prove my point. Took a job and went away. When I came back, I made it clear that they needed to come up with a document that said she ruled the checkbook. I was done being questioned about money, and I’d come to dislike the folks that had the most.”

He gazed out the window, and by then I’d spent enough time in barrooms with him to realize that he wasn’t looking through the glass but at it, using it as a mirror, a means to see my mother.

“Last night, Mr. Priest informed me of a clear clause stating that none of your grandmother’s trust may be used in the legal defense of a person accused of a crime.”

I blinked. “What? Why would she have even thought to do that?”

“I suspect your grandmother was afraid that I might develop a soft spot for Eddie Terhune,” he said. “But who’s to know now? Whatever her rationale, the clause remains.”

“You’re not trying to defend my father,” I said. “You’re trying to defend Mom.”

“I’m aware of that. But Mr. Priest’s office is concerned that it doesn’t stipulate the accused person by name, only by deed. The action is the thing, Alford. The allegation.”

I got it then. “You mean you can’t pay her lawyer at all.”

“We’ll get it sorted,” he said.

“How?”

“We’ll get it sorted,” he repeated, and then he went silent. I could hear my mother’s laughter, bright and giddy, as if nothing had changed, and, softer, the bartender telling her he’d heard the gangsters were likely headed for Indiana, because those types always had some fools for family who’d try to hide them.

“I’ve spoken to you like a man, Alford,” Grandfather Cody said. “Now, I trust you’ll show me you have a man’s discretion and hold your tongue on this topic.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good lad.” He stood up and went to the bar and spoke in a low voice to the bartender, unfolding a piece of paper he took from his pocket that I knew was Al Brady’s Wanted poster. There was no question that the bartender had seen it already, likely in that day’s newspaper, but my grandfather merely wanted to interrupt his conversation with my mother, it seemed.

I turned around and faced the window. Two boys rode bicycles up the steep hill away from the water. They rose from seated positions to standing when the pedaling got harder. I wondered if they were talking about the Saratoga robbery and the bank guard left for dead. About my father. My mother.

The odds were good, that morning, that they were. They were better than they should have been in a town full of strangers.

I felt as if another stranger had joined me now, but she wasn’t going to take any questions. My grandmother was past that point. I had known her as a stern woman, but the clause in the trust forbidding the use of a single dollar for an accused person’s defense seemed to go beyond stern to cruel.

The boys pedaled out of sight, and my cheeseburger arrived, and when my grandfather came back to the booth, my mother was with him, some unspoken truce negotiated for my sake. No one had seen Al Brady, James Dalhover, Clarence Shaffer, or Nickel Terhune at Risko’s Tavern in Sackets Harbor, New York, but everybody was looking.

In the car, my mother lit a cigarette and said it was time to move on.

“Too quiet, not enough action for Al Brady.”

“Unless the goal is a hideout,” Grandfather Cody answered. “But even then, I don’t disagree; the place is so small that it would be hard to be a stranger for long.”

Just like that, they were back on speaking terms, a retired sleuth and an amateur one and me, the keeper of secrets, riding along—and my grandmother’s ghost too, unseen but felt more with each mile.

From then on, my mother seemed to be her old self, complaining about my grandfather’s driving and making observations about anything and everything that might rile him up. Whenever she caught my eye in the rearview mirror, she would wink, and she looked as confident as ever.

I’d begun to learn that people carry wounds that mirrors can’t show, though.

She returned to the topic of roller-skating as we drove. She chastised my grandfather for underestimating Al Brady’s passion for the pastime, and when he refused to take the bait, she found a new tack.

“I think you’re scared to try.”

“I’m hardly scared to question a bunch of fools on skates.”

“I mean you’re afraid to skate.”

“Why on earth would I need to strap wheels on my feet to show people Al Brady’s picture?”

“To blend in, of course. Wasn’t that part of the Burns method? I thought we were supposed to be invisible, less obtrusive than wallpaper. If you want to be noticed at a skating rink, be the one standing in boots. Isn’t it remarkable, Alford, the way your grandfather can contradict himself without hesitation?”

I couldn’t keep from grinning. I was trying to picture my grandfather on roller skates. It was impossible.

“I rode a bronco in Wyoming that had never known a rider before,” my grandfather said. “Don’t say little wheels on shoes are beyond me.”

Anyone else, literally any other human who walked the earth, could challenge him on roller-skating and he’d respond with curt dismissal, seeing the whole thing as beneath him. His daughter, however, provoked him. She could rile him—and she delighted in it.

“I suppose we’ll have to see it to know,” she said.

39

NICKEL

BY THE TIME they were holed up in an old trapper’s cabin with only half a roof deep in the shadows of the Adirondacks, Nickel was a hero.

Somewhere along the line in the telling and retelling of the story, Nickel’s driving became the defining moment of their success, more so than Clarence with the dynamite or Al Brady guiding them back to the vault.

Nickel’s driving had stolen the legend.

“I couldn’t see a fuckin’ building in front of my face, but this bastard, he’s driving like it’s the Indy 500!” Brady said.

Clarence and Dalhover agreed heartily, and Nickel just let them talk, never mentioning that he’d been driving into his own tears and on the empty streets of the post-parade city. He didn’t say that all he’d seen were red lights before he banged that U-turn, and while he supposed he could take some credit for finding the highway, that work had been done before, overnight, when he’d put the map into his mind.

His vision had cleared by the time they were northbound on Route 9, although he could still taste the poison gas, an awful chemical promise that what had been inhaled in that bank couldn’t be coughed clear, not now, not ever.

He’d chased the mountain roads. Gotten off the highway when the sirens were coming from both the north and the south, stayed to the gravel lanes as the trees grew denser and the roads steeper, feeling the comfort of the mountains, shelter all around them, every bend a fine one from which to make a stand with the machine gun and rifles if they needed to.

They didn’t need to. Best part about pulling a bank job on the Fourth of July was exactly as Al Brady had said: The police were occupied with crowd control.

About two miles up an ever-narrowing rutted logging road, they came upon the trapper’s cabin, and what it lacked in structural integrity it made up for with a stack of downed pines to screen the Ford. Nickel pulled in behind it, cut the engine, and they sat and listened to the breeze whistle through the shot-out windows.

The only sirens they could hear were distant, soft as the birdsong.

“We’re good here,” Nickel said, and he believed it, something in that birdsong telling him this place was all right. He believed it even more when they checked out the pitiful remnants of the cabin and scared up a few dozen mice and one hissing raccoon. No one had been in here in many months.

There was a hand pump that worked to draw water from an old well or, more likely, a spring on the property, and Nickel, Clarence, and Dalhover took turns pumping water and rinsing their faces, sucking in mouthfuls of water and spitting, trying to get rid of the taste of the tear gas.

Al Brady didn’t use the pump until he’d finished counting the money. After everyone’s pockets had been emptied and Al’s canvas bag had been sorted through twice, he had a firm total: $29,712.

“Could’ve been five times that, maybe ten,” Brady said wistfully, and Nickel knew he was seeing the big vault’s layout in his mind again, all that had been left behind.

“It’s still a hell of a haul,” Dalhover said.

“Yeah,” Brady agreed. “It is.”

But he’d never be at peace with it, Nickel knew.

Clarence Shaffer retrieved a bottle of whiskey and four Irish cream ales he’d stowed in the Ford, and they drank those in the cool of the evening, which was even brisker up here than it had been in Saratoga on the Frost of July that the townsfolk had had so much fun joking about that morning. No way they’d ever forget this holiday.

“I never saw anything like that tear-gas trap before,” Brady mused, sipping the whiskey, then passing it to Dalhover. “That guard, he knew what was coming. Kept telling us to go to the other bank. He didn’t want any part of the tear gas.”

Nickel didn’t mention that he’d dragged the guard clear of the blast zone. What was the point? Didn’t show weakness or courage. For all he knew, the poor son of a bitch had still died. What it had accomplished: Nickel lost the Thompson.

No, he hadn’t lost it. He’d put it down.

Did that matter?

“Going to need to lay low for a while,” Brady said. “We thought it was hot before, but that ain’t nothing like this, blowing a bank in the heart of town on the Fourth of July. Hoover’s dainty little ass won’t be able to handle it. They’ll be coming hard now, you know that.”

They’d already been coming hard. Al wasn’t wrong, though. Heart of a city like that, and on a national holiday? It would embarrass the G-men. One thing Hoover had demonstrated clearly was that he couldn’t abide a taunt. Dillinger had enjoyed taunting him right up until he walked out of the Biograph Theater. Nickel imagined that moment, as he had before, wondering when Johnnie knew it was over, and now the question called to mind the lag between the sound of the glass capsule buried inside the vault door breaking and the appearance of the gas. Just enough time for you to realize you were finished.

Kind of how it felt now, here on the quiet mountain, birds singing and frogs croaking. Nickel stretched and took the whiskey from Dalhover and poured it down his scorched throat.

As darkness settled, a lone police car cruised up the mountain lane. They heard it coming with plenty of notice and were all in position, eyes to the gunsights, fingers on the triggers.

The car passed, went on uphill, its headlights painting the white-barked birches as the driver executed an awkward turn that told Nickel the road dead-ended farther up. When the car came back, the driver was going fast, the way you did when you were angry at yourself for having wasted time. Nickel didn’t think the cops would come back, and they didn’t.

There was no sleep that night.

The next day, they hung close to the cabin, guns always at hand, and made plans. Shaffer wanted to go to Indiana, argued it was smart because it was the last thing Hoover would expect, for them to head home. It was also what people did when they were scared, Nickel thought; they ran for familiar territory. Brady and Dalhover wanted to go back to Baltimore. They trusted the girls there, which was foolish, but the thing about being wanted men was that their best choices were already in the rearview mirror.

“What about you, Nickel?” Brady asked. “Ride with us?”

Nickel shook his head. “I’d like to find a quieter place, let this die down. Once I’m in a good spot, I can let you know, and we can all stay there if it gets hot for you in Baltimore.”

“Where you thinking?” Brady demanded.

“Maine,” Nickel said. He had the map in mind again, all that green, so few roads, hiding places aplenty.

“Don’t know a damn thing about Maine,” Dalhover said. “None of us ever been there, not a one, not even for a night.”

“That’s the point,” Nickel said.

“Could be good,” Brady allowed. “Besides, we already told the girls in Baltimore we had the factory up there. If Nickel gets word to us and we need to head north, there’s an explanation.”

Nickel just wanted the space, wanted to be anywhere but back in Baltimore, where the mad dog had nipped at his soul in a way it never had before, so he merely nodded.

“Factory,” Dalhover sneered. “Remind me, what do we make out of all them pine trees?”

Everyone looked at Nickel as if he’d thought this through. Would he be in a collapsing trapper’s cabin in the Adirondacks with a pistol and a bagful of money if he’d thought things through? But they were waiting, and he had to say something. Furniture was complicated. He liked simple things.

“Matches.”

“Matches!” Dalhover snorted with disgust, but Al Brady, he just shrugged.

“It’s boring,” he said. “Boring is good. Boring is safe. Where you think your matches come from, Jimmy?”

Dalhover fell silent the way a dumb man does when confronted with a question that requires thought, and that was the end of the discussion. They agreed to separate, at least for a time. Communication would be handled through letters, coded messages. Brady had already set up three post office boxes in Baltimore under the name Al Goins, and Clarence Shaffer said he had one under the name Cletus Strawn in a little Indiana town called Stinesville. Nickel, not knowing where he’d end up, gave a Maine town up north: Lewiston.

A good name, anonymous, nothing to draw the eye.

“What will you be calling yourself?” Al Brady asked.

“Not Buster or Butch,” Dalhover said. “Not again.”

“New names,” Brady agreed. “Have to be.”

Nickel had never been good with names. Hell, if he was, he’d remember how he’d come by his own nickname. They were all waiting on him again, though, same as with the match factory he’d just imagined into being. Different thoughts were swirling in his head, Maine and forests and all that could have been in his life if not for a few long-ago mistakes. Savannah Cody was in there, she was always in there, so he found himself saying the name Jacob Winter.

It was a dumb one to pick, too famous, but the other three weren’t particularly literate fellows, certainly hadn’t read a thousand-page book written by a now-dead Civil War hero, so nobody quarreled with it.

They divided the guns and the cash and at dusk set off down the mountain to steal a fresh car.

40

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: You said everything changed after you heard about the Saratoga bank job. What do you mean?

The pace changed. Those family days, the summertime on the road, it couldn’t last. I thought it could until Saratoga. There was so much coming at me, and the weeks with Dad and Alford were a bubble. I was always able to find that way to live, you know? To forget the future. I had a trial date, but I hadn’t done anything, so I really did believe it would all work out. In the meantime… I was part of a family. Dad’s style is different. He has plenty of lectures but no judgment.

I liked those days on the road. I liked seeing the way Alford and Dad interacted, the way my son reflected his grandfather. I didn’t mention it, but I also liked seeing how Alford reflected Eddie. He had the same kind of demeanor, and there were odd similarities, like the way they both took to maps. Those were good days. I thought we’d have more of them. I thought I’d have a competent lawyer and a clear-eyed jury, and even in the absolute worst case, we wouldn’t be here, because… well, because I hadn’t earned that yet. I didn’t know what lay ahead. It’s easy to be hopeful when you’re clueless.

I was convinced the men would lay low for an extended period after the jailbreak. Then Saratoga happened, and it was clear that wasn’t going to be the case. Al was becoming more of a mad dog, as Eddie would’ve said. I knew Eddie had to have been driving in Saratoga, by the way. I was sure of that.

Toland: Why?

Because he got away. You missed him then, and you’ll keep missing him as long as he has the wheel. The only times he’s ever been caught, someone else was driving. That robbery in Saratoga was so brazen, though, and they vanished so completely that I just knew he’d had the wheel. Otherwise he’d have ended up dead or in jail.

The trouble was, it brought even more attention. You know how that went: more agents, a bigger task force, special attention from Hoover. If we were going to find them before you all did, we needed to move fast.

It also felt dangerous. I told you how the scene in Ohio scared me—how it changed me—and how I began to feel like a mother. Like the woman I should’ve been all those years. I could still look at my son and wink, but it wasn’t the same. I was learning that love and fear are partners for parents; that’s the rule. Dad was right that Alford should have stayed at the farm. It was the right place for him. We were getting close to Maine, though, which I thought meant close to Eddie, so I had to come up with an option for him other than Indiana. Thank goodness Alford took to Moosehead Lake.

That was eerie to watch, honestly. This place on the map that had fascinated his father was the place that captivated Alford in real life.

Toland: When did you arrive there?

Not long after news of the Saratoga job. We drove through Vermont without stopping, then through New Hampshire and the White Mountains and on into Maine. It was my first time there, after all the conversations I had about the place with Eddie. Two things stood out immediately: how clean the air and how abundant the mosquitoes and blackflies. They flew at you in clouds, like squadrons. Dad would stand impervious. It was a sight to behold.

I knew Eddie would like the country we were in, but the others would hate it. Brady and Dalhover would get bored fast. I was hopeful that Moosehead Lake would be a different speed, with the big hotel on the island and the paddlewheel riverboats, all of that.

Well, we got two flat tires on the road to Greenville Junction. We were up on a rise looking down at the lake. It would’ve been easy to mistake it for the coast, that lake is so big. Took our breath away. Or mine, anyhow; Dad was fussing with the tires.

A local in a sorry excuse for a truck came along and gave us a ride to the train station. There were apple carts for seats. I couldn’t believe the truck ran. The windshield was gone and the wind carried a cold bite even in the summer. That local told Alford that Kineo Island was the home of the thunder god, and I assure you that made an impression. It was an impressive place, and I liked watching my son look around at it. You could see the awe he felt. It was close to what I’d imagined when I read Thoreau, waiting for Eddie to get out of prison.

When I found out they had boys’ camps up there for rich kids in the summer, I thought it was going to be a good way to keep him safe and happy. Dad and I could continue looking for Eddie, and Alford would stay at the lake. Close to us, but safe. The funny thing was, I couldn’t sell Dad on it. He never trusted anyone as much as he did himself, after all.

It took the night in Lewiston to change his mind.

41

ALFORD

I WAS IN LOVE with Moosehead Lake. For three days, we didn’t leave Mount Kineo, and the hotel there was everything they’d promised and more. There were boat excursions and hiking trips and even a golf course; fine restaurants that I cared little about but that impressed my mother and grandfather; and high on the mountaintop, looking out over the expanse of the Maine wilderness, a fire tower. It was there, enjoying a picnic lunch and gazing over the sparkling water, that I made the mistake of saying I wanted to stay in Maine all summer, right in this spot.

No one paid me much mind at the time, and I didn’t really register the remark myself, but it would come to haunt me soon enough.

By the fourth day, convinced that none of the Brady Gang had passed this way or would, Grandfather Cody determined we should head for the coast, seeking a place that matched the sketch on my father’s cell wall. I was disappointed about leaving but not heartbroken because we were traveling together, and fresh adventures awaited.

We went east through Bangor to a town called Bucksport that yielded no leads. Then it was south through Belfast and Camden, my grandfather struck by the visuals: waterfronts with sailboats at moorings, lighthouses, two- and three-story brick buildings looking out at the sea, all of it a fine replica of the prison-wall sketch.

No one recognized the faces of Al Brady, James Dalhover, Clarence Shaffer, or Nickel Terhune. No train-station attendant or postmaster reported any activity of interest.

In a city called Rockland, while we ate fish sandwiches and watched the sun settle behind the low range of mountains the locals called the Camden Hills, my mother announced that we were scouting the wrong places.

“It’s too remote. Could I imagine Eddie in such a town? Sure. But Al Brady and James Dalhover? No.”

“If you’ve been sitting on a more promising strategy, now’s the time to mention it,” Grandfather Cody told her. “Why, we could have used your insight a month ago. A shame you weren’t traveling with us.”

“They’ll be in a city,” she said, ignoring his jab. “Brady and Dalhover don’t like small towns unless they know them well. Too many locals, not enough strangers to blend in with, and the women of Rockland won’t be enough for them. These are housewives and high-school sweethearts. There’s not a professional in the mix that I can see.”

“The boy is sitting right here,” Grandfather Cody snapped, and again my mother ignored him.

“I’m just telling you we’re wasting time up here looking at lighthouses and sunsets.” She broke a piece of fried haddock off her sandwich and pushed a stray, windblown hair away from her face. “There are roller-skating rinks in Lewiston, Augusta, and Portland.”

“You and those silly skates.”

“Dance halls too. More women. That matters, Dad. You can pretend otherwise, obsessing over that sketch, but I actually know the men we’re looking for.”

“You also suggested the lake with the steamboats was worth a visit,” Grandfather Cody said, surly but softer and more reflective, as if giving her argument consideration.

“I did, because Eddie spoke of it. That alone made it worth a visit.”

“I loved it there,” I offered, and neither of them responded to that.

“But it was a false start,” she said. “Give me some credit, Dad. Every new town, you tell us how important it is to find the right source. You and mother might have hated me for it, but when it comes to men like Al Brady, I am the right source.”

Grandfather Cody looked out to sea. “There was no hate in our house, Savannah Lynn. You know that.”

His voice was soft. I’d never heard him use her middle name before. In fact, I hadn’t even known it. That was when I realized she shared my grandmother’s middle name.

“Sure,” my mother said, a rare hint of bitterness in her tone, then she tossed the remains of the sandwich to the gulls, which caused such a screeching and chaos of beating wings that the moment was broken.

“Either we can keep working our way down the coast having picnics or we can find Al Brady. If you want to do the latter, I suggest we start in Lewiston. Mock the roller rinks all you like, but I bet Hoover’s boys aren’t. They’ll be at the right one, and we’ll be a day behind.”

She knew precisely how to motivate him.

He pulled out a cigar and took his time lighting it.

“I’ve avoided that city,” he said after the cigar had a full white tip of ash. “I’ll admit it.”

“Lewiston? What on earth for?”

“The talk in the hotel back on Kineo about the labor strikes.”

Businessmen at a table beside us in the Mount Kineo House dining room had talked about a dramatic strike that spring, shoe-factory workers in a heated clash on a bridge between Lewiston and Auburn, the National Guard called in.

“The fellow who was talking about the governor sending in troops and setting up sandbags on the bridge?” he continued. “That cocky bastard reminded me of men I knew and didn’t like. The way he laughed at the bayonets coming out for the French Canadians… that took me back to the West and the coal miners.”

He smoked. My mother waited with rare patience.

“But you’re not wrong,” he said. “Lewiston merits a look. I’ve been a poor detective.”

“I didn’t say that. I just suggested a change.”

“I’m the one saying it.”

The next morning, we left for Lewiston.

The day was cool and bright and the drive was lovely until Thomaston, when we passed the state prison. The brick building was less imposing than the pictures I’d seen of Michigan City, but that was faint praise. Jail was jail. While my mother managed to be glib about her charges and looming trial, she couldn’t render them into pure fiction. It was real for her. Once, I might hardly have noticed losing my other parent to prison. She was gone more than she was around, and having grown up with my father on the front page, I told myself I was prepared for more pain. You can tell yourself lots of things, but it’s harder to change your heart than your mind.

We stopped in Lisbon Falls for gas, and there I saw a massive factory hugging the riverbank. The Worumbo, the station attendant called it when I asked. The mill was huge, and it stank worse than the trunk of the Lincoln had while I breathed through my metal tube. We carried on over the bridge and the big river below. As quaint as the countryside en route to Lewiston was, the town felt anything but welcoming. There was a harsh haze over the smokestacks, the air was foul, and everyone seemed to regard Grandfather Cody’s Lincoln and its Indiana license plates with suspicion. The sidewalks teemed with activity, but most of the language I heard wasn’t English, and that was the first time I’d had such an experience. It felt like we’d crossed the Atlantic in a mere hour’s drive west.

“What is that language?” I whispered as we unloaded our bags.

“French,” Grandfather Cody replied. “They’re all down from Canada, here for the work, but they speak French in some provinces up there. That’s part of these people’s troubles, Alford: There are some here who don’t welcome them except for the labor they provide, see no value to anything but their backs and hands. The workers are also Catholic, and I suspect that has something to do with the resistance, because I’ve yet to meet a church that didn’t demand its own flavor at the exclusion of all others.”

“Your wife would’ve shot you for that remark,” my mother said.

“She would’ve,” he agreed, and a faint smile played over his face, then vanished. “But she certainly had no patience for the Klan, Savannah, and they’re apparently as active in the state of Maine as they are in Indiana—which is saying something.”

As we did upon arrival in every town, we adhered to the Burns method. First stop, the train station, where Grandfather Cody came up empty. Next, the newspaper. He spoke to a few people—one reporter, two pressmen—and left with the sense that Maine might be the one state in the nation that wasn’t preoccupied with the Brady Gang story. Locally, they were watching the labor unrest. Nationally, the focus was on Amelia Earhart and rising tensions in Europe.

“We’ll leave the gangster stories to the Midwest,” one surly reporter from the Evening Sun told Grandfather Cody. “No chance they’re in Maine.”

On to the third stop, then: the post office. There were a few in Lewiston, all showing the Wanted posters. Grandfather Cody asked if there had been any strangers setting up post office boxes. One young clerk was intrigued by our quest and produced a ledger of everyone who’d opened a post office box in the past month.

“I’m not sure it’s legal to show you this,” he mused.

“Don’t worry about that,” my mother said, touching his arm lightly, enough of a distraction to give Grandfather Cody time to scan the names. His face was impassive, so I assumed it was another swing and miss. We were on the sidewalk before he said, “He may be here, Savannah.”

My mother stopped walking, blinking at him in the afternoon sun. “What?”

“Did you see the last name on the ledger?”

“No. I was trying to buy you a moment.”

“Jacob Winter.”

42

ALFORD

WE STOOD LIKE ROCKS in a stream, people jostling by us.

“A coincidence,” my mother said at last. “None of them would know that name except for Eddie, and he surely wouldn’t use it.”

“It’s not a common name, and he’s not a creative man.”

My mother considered that, then nodded. “You’re right.”

We all gazed around the Lewiston street as if we might spot him right there. I felt my heartbeat pick up. The cross-country pursuit had been fun, and yet I’d never really believed it would pay off. It seemed impossible for us to achieve what the FBI couldn’t. But here we were.

“Do we report it?” Grandfather Cody asked, and I was surprised that he was putting it forward as a question when his typical role was the decider.

“I’d want to be sure,” my mother said.

He nodded. “Me too. That means either making friends with the postmaster, finding a place to keep surveillance on this spot, or, ideally, both.”

There were no hotels with a view of the post office. Grandfather Cody studied the street for a long time, considering its potential, and when my mother asked if we should go back in and try to talk to the helpful-if-nervous clerk again, he shook his head.

“I need to think on this.”

So we left, the thrill of potential riding with us. No one said much. We checked in at a hotel in view of one of the largest churches I’d ever seen, with twin Gothic spires reaching heavenward as if determined to pierce the polluted haze. While Grandfather Cody arranged for the rooms, my mother inquired with the bellman about a roller rink, and he gave directions to a place called Geary’s Emporium.

“It’s worth trying,” my mother said to my grandfather while we unpacked. “If any of them are in this burg, Dad, they’ll be found in a roller-skating rink or a dance hall or some tacky joint by the river and near a cathouse.”

I hadn’t heard the term cathouse before, but from the way Grandfather Cody frowned at my mother for using it, I intuited the general sense.

“We’ll scout this evening,” she said. “I think you’re right about the name. It’s just the kind of mistake Eddie would make. He’s not good under pressure, and I’m always on his mind.”

She said this with more than a little pride, which drew a sigh from my grandfather but no argument.

“After dinner, we’ll start with this roller-skating place, Geary’s,” she continued.

Here, my grandfather ran into a dilemma. He had no desire to bring me along, and I could see that, but he wasn’t inclined to leave me at a strange hotel in a strange city either. He said as much, only to be dismissed by a wave of my mother’s hand.

“Children skate at these places,” my mother said, but she seemed less than sure.

“As young as Alford, and at night?” Grandfather Cody was dubious but not argumentative. He had less clarity on this world than she did.

“We’re not staying into the wee hours. Just long enough for me to see if the venue suits Al and the others.”

So we went together, walking down the sidewalk in the twilight of the summer evening that already carried a hint of autumn. You could smell it in the air despite the stench of the mills, a vague crispness that promised the first leaves were already weakening, if not falling. Autumn was my favorite season, but this year was different. My mother’s trial would be in the fall. I disliked the rush Maine’s climate seemed to be in.

We passed stores and restaurants and pubs, as many BIENVENUE signs out front as there were WELCOME ones. When I asked if that was what bienvenue meant in French, Grandfather Cody complimented my deduction, which always pleased me. He was in full Burns mode tonight, scanning the panorama of the strange city and drinking it in. I tried to do the same, to see the city with unique details that could be sketched later that evening, when it was up to my mind. “Use your brainbox,” he would say, and that was more challenging at times than it should have been, the details blurring. Of Lewiston, I knew I would remember five things: the mills, their stink, the grand expanse of the Androscoggin River, the French influence, and those Gothic spires of the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul.

Then we reached Geary’s, and the basilica was forgotten.

The roller rink looked more like a barn than a business, the name of the place painted on weathered gray boards in dark green and underlined in red waves, giving it a Christmassy appearance. Band music drifted out of windows that opened at an angle, laughs and shouts serving as a chorus to the instrumental. We stepped inside, and the building seemed immediately larger, with high ceilings and exposed beams from which dangled lines of old-fashioned light bulbs, many flickering, some out entirely.

“Edison’s first run at it, I see,” Grandfather Cody observed dryly, studying the dim lighting.

The center of the room featured a massive lacquered floor, and the speed of the skaters on it shocked me—and the sound. Everything seemed loud and echoing, pure chaos.

I looked at my mother and thought that I’d never seen her more content.

“Wonderful,” she breathed. Then, as if catching herself, she glanced at Grandfather Cody and added, “This will appeal to them. It’s worth the stop.”

He seemed taken aback by the sound and fury of the place. “You see any familiar faces?”

She spent a long time scanning the crowd before she shook her head. “No. But the spot is right. Al would love it. It’s just what he’s after.”

I studied the men in the room, trying to apply the Burns method, but it was harder here than it had been in any of the railroad stations or tiny taverns. The room was too big, too loud, too steeped in sensory detail for me to tunnel in and find the one thing that counted. I felt small again, and when I looked at my mother and saw the confidence in her face—her comfort with this chaotic, noisy, scent-and-sweat-filled scene—it only deepened that emotion.

She was at home here? How?

“I’ll have to rent some skates,” she said. This brought Grandfather Cody back to the moment.

“Rent them? You mean to tell me that you lugged those things halfway across the country and then left them behind for a five-block walk?”

“I forgot,” she said, and then, before he could gather steam, she was off to the rental counter. She stopped when she realized we hadn’t moved and waved us impatiently forward. “Come on, we’ll all take a turn.”

“I have work to do,” Grandfather Cody said.

“If you just stand there looking around suspiciously, you might as well hold up a sign that says Detective on Duty. The goal is to blend in; didn’t Burns teach you that?”

Grandfather Cody snorted and looked at the crowd. “Blend in! I don’t see another white-haired fellow out there.”

“I told you, Alford—he’s afraid to skate,” my mother said.

That was enough. Grandfather Cody strode past her, slapped a dollar on the counter, and demanded three pairs of roller skates. The clerk asked our sizes, then handed the skates over, and we carried them to a nearby bench while the band blared away.

I had been on skates before, but I could tell by the way Grandfather Cody removed his boots and eyed the roller skates that they were entirely foreign to him. He laced them up slowly while my mother, on the rink already, twirled, her skirt whirling, lips pinched to hide her smile. Grandfather Cody put his palms on the bench and swallowed. It was obvious he wasn’t confident about standing. My mother extended her hand.

He looked up, glowering, his blue eyes bright in contrast with his white hair, which had grown longer and wilder that summer without barbering.

“I’ll be fine, thank you,” he said, and he pushed himself upright.

I had never seen a man unfold so slowly. It was as if he were being pulled up by invisible marionette strings—laboriously. But he made it, and he was even taller with the added height from the wheels.

“Nothing to it,” he said.

“You haven’t moved,” my mother shot back.

“I’ll pick my own pace.”

His pace could politely be described as glacial. He did move… but I wasn’t sure how. It seemed to come from a slight forward lean, the weight of his long torso providing the barest suggestion to the skates. If he moved a muscle in his legs, it wasn’t evident. His knees were locked, and if not for the slope of the floor, I don’t think anything would’ve happened at all. He rolled ahead inch by inch, his arms held out from his body, palms down, looking like a frozen image of an umpire ruling a base runner safe.

“That won’t do,” my mother said, and gripped his right hand.

“Savannah!”

His bark went unheeded, and she took off, towing him toward the center of the floor like a water-skier. The world’s most rigid water-skier. He stood as if his joints had been fused, leaning back slightly now as if to combat my mother’s momentum.

She was a remarkable skater—powerful, fast, effortless. As she towed him around the rink, his barks of “Savannah! Savannah Lynn!” seemed like percussion for the band. The crowd on the rink began to stop and point and laugh. My mother gathered speed, which meant Grandfather Cody gathered speed, and then, in the dead center of the rink, she released his hand and sent him sailing.

He didn’t even try to move. He just kept his arms out, Frankenstein-like, his spine rigid and his knees locked, and his cry of “Savannah!” echoed through the rink. He was heading right for the wall—and fast. As if they’d composed the score for just this moment, the band closed out with a blaring trumpet and then fell silent, instilling a hush in the previously chaotic space.

As my grandfather hurtled toward the wall, my mother skated backward—a skill I hadn’t been able to master—as gracefully as she’d moved forward, beaming a smile at me and the dozens of onlookers. She never glanced at him, kept up her pace, and at the last second, just when I was certain he would strike the wall face-first, she caught his hand and spun him back toward her.

Here he should have fallen, and it would have been a spectacular sight, like the slow toppling of a sequoia, but my mother was as strong as she was graceful, and she caught him with an arm around the waist and held him upright. It looked like a dance move from Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers—only my mother was playing Fred’s role, and my grandfather looked as lifeless as the statue of the Reverend General back at Monument Circle.

The crowd burst into applause and whistles. My mother grinned and skated on, still supporting his weight.

He had no choice but to trust her. I could see that he knew this and hated it, but if he tried to shake her off, he would fall—and hard. Also, she was returning him to the wall, which he’d fixed his gaze on the way a shipwrecked sailor looked at land.

The band started up again, loud and brassy, and my mother skated Grandfather Cody right up to the wall, which he grasped with both hands, his big knuckles bulging. He took a deep breath, and I rolled backward, preparing for the explosion. Then he looked at my mother and said, “See? I told you it was simple.”

She gave a gale of laughter, bowed—which brought more applause from the crowd—executed a perfect pirouette, and skated away from him, her hair fanned out behind her, cheeks flushing red with delight. She looked like a teenager then.

That was about to become a problem.

“Alford,” Grandfather Cody said, “I’ll thank you to escort me back to that bench.”

I took his arm and guided him to the bench. He couldn’t figure out how to sit on it, and I wasn’t sure he’d ever bend his knees again, they’d been locked so tightly, but finally he put both hands on my shoulders to brace himself and fell heavily. The motion rocketed me backward and I nearly fell myself but managed to keep my balance. I skated back to him, trying to hide my laughter but without much success.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“A foolish question. Of course I’m all right. It was a little twirl around the rink, that’s all. Child’s play.”

His eyes drifted past me, then warmed, and he said, “Look at her,” softly.

I turned and looked. My mother was in the center of the rink, twirling in a spin so fast it made me dizzy to watch, one leg held out perfectly parallel to the floor. She was a blur, and somehow maintained the speed, so many circles I couldn’t begin to count them, before finally her momentum slowed and she lowered her leg. There were a few loud whistles. I didn’t think anything of them at the time. It was applause, that was all. She deserved it.

Then the men skated toward her. Three of them, in their twenties maybe, leanly muscled, dressed in white shirts and slacks, two with dark hair slicked back, one with a blond crew cut. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up to showcase impressive biceps. I didn’t like them, but after they exchanged words with my mother that we couldn’t hear, she laughed and skated away.

I turned back to my grandfather.

“Do you want me to stay here with you or can I skate with her?” Our time on the road had taught me that a kid was a repellent to a suitor.

Grandfather Cody didn’t say anything.

“Grandpa?”

He silenced me with a raised finger. The warmth had gone out of his face. I followed his gaze and saw that the men were following my mother, skating close to her, almost surrounding her, wolves after a doe. She was still speaking to them, but her smile was gone. She executed a quick spin, gave them a curt and clear Goodbye wave, and started in the opposite direction. The blond one with the muscles was the fastest in pursuit, but all three followed. The blond man reached for her hand as if to skate the way couples did, and she forced a tight smile and swatted his hand away, polite but firm.

He put his arm around her waist and spun her toward him.

When she shoved herself free, it was firm but not polite, and they both nearly fell.

“Alford. Get these damn wheels off me.” Grandfather Cody was already untying his right skate. I knelt and hurriedly untied the left.

The band was still playing and people were still skating, some oblivious, others watching with a familiar uneasiness that said the three young men were known commodities. Obviously bullies, as nobody was stepping in to help. I had never conceived of a situation in which my mother would need anyone to help her. That was the residue of her confidence. Now, though, she was alone and surrounded, and the blond man took hold of her wrist while the other two crowded her, speaking in low, taunting voices. Her face was pale, twin points of red on her cheeks. She looked more angry than afraid, but she was clearly aware of the numbers.

They won’t hurt her, not in front of a whole crowd, I thought, but then I looked again at the crowd and wasn’t so sure. They were scared of these men. I imagined her alone here. She’d have to walk off into the night in this strange town with its smokestacks and dark alleys and thundering river. Those men could follow her. Others like them could meet her.

The world changed for me at a roller rink. I saw clearer that night, saw through the eyes of a woman who had to walk the streets alone, and I wished I hadn’t. There were supposed to be good guys watching out for women. There always were in the comic books.

Tonight, there was only my grandfather, shoving past me and striding onto the slick, polished floor in his stocking feet, not having paused to put his boots on. He was a big man but he was old, and there were three of them around her, young and muscular, and I felt helpless as I followed him because he was too old and I was too young, too small. Someone should call the police, I thought, but the men hadn’t done anything to merit that yet.

Yet.

They would, though. You could see it in their eyes, their Can’t touch me arrogance, the way they looked my mother up and down in front of the audience without hesitation, let alone embarrassment. They were rotten bastards, and comfortable being that.

My grandfather was about five paces ahead of me and moving fast, but he didn’t make it to them before my mother slapped the blond man.

She caught him hard across the cheek with her left hand—her right was pinned by his grip on her wrist—and smacked his leering grin off. I felt a moment’s victory until he turned back, and what had replaced the lecherous look was worse. It was an ugliness I hadn’t seen in an adult before, a pure cruelty that hummed with violence. The closest expression I’d ever encountered to the blond man’s look at the rink was on the face of my Terhune-side grandfather back at that blighted farm with the guard dog on the porch.

We were close enough to hear some of his response, although the only word I caught clearly was slut, not said so much as snarled.

Then Grandfather Cody was on them.

I was expecting a verbal assault. It was the only kind I’d ever seen him make, and even those occasions were rare. He commanded respect through size and silence, for the most part; rarely raised his voice, never lost his temper.

I was perhaps even more unprepared than the blond man was when Grandfather Cody led with a punch.

The blond man was facing my mother, had turned only long enough to size up my approaching grandfather, assess his age, and dismiss him with a sneer. That was a bad mistake, because the pivot meant that the left side of his jaw was perfectly exposed to Grandfather Cody’s massive fist. The blond man was shorter than my grandfather by a good six inches, and that meant his chin was level with Grandfather Cody’s shoulder when he drove his fist up and into it, the power coming from his legs.

The blond man’s blue eyes widened as his head lifted, then closed as he fell. He dropped onto his right side and stayed motionless, the wheels on his skates turning slowly in the air.

“Why, you old son of a bitch!” One of the dark-haired men, taller than his knocked-out friend and with a narrow, hard face that seemed the work of a sculptor having a bad day, shoved my mother aside so he could come at my grandfather.

Another mistake—because it meant my mother fell.

She fell because she’d tripped over the blond man at her feet, an obstacle that was ultimately Grandfather Cody’s fault, but that didn’t mean much. What mattered to Grandfather Cody was that she fell. I had seen him angry but never with the kind of rage that filled his eyes when he saw his daughter land on her rear end, upended by a profane man with greasy hair. He looked at her, then back at the lean young man coming at him, and the look he gave him was furious enough that the lean man would’ve pulled up short if he could have, never mind his perception of his own toughness and my grandfather’s age. He saw enough in that look to try to abort his charge.

A shame he was on skates.

He slid into my grandfather while trying to throw a wild, looping right hook. Something I learned then: You might be able to pinch a woman’s behind while you’re on roller skates, but you damn well can’t throw a quality punch on them.

Grandfather Cody caught the man’s hand in both of his, reminding me of the way he played baseball without a glove, not bothered by even my hardest fastballs, which both impressed and embarrassed me. Then he rotated, still gripping the man’s closed fist, and used the puncher’s momentum to throw him. The man pinwheeled into the wall; he got his left hand up just before impact but not soon enough to keep his face from kissing the wall a fraction of a second later. He staggered back and would’ve fallen but Grandfather Cody was already there. As rigid as he’d been on wheels, he had plenty of fluidity now, standing on the lacquered floor in his socks. The band stopped playing and one woman screamed as Grandfather Cody slammed the man into the wall a second time and then a third. By that point, the slumped man wasn’t able to get a hand up to lessen the impact—he might not even have been conscious—and the sound of his nose shattering was as sharp and clear in the cavernous room as the crack of a cue ball on the break.

Grandfather Cody dropped him the way I’d seen him deposit feed sacks, like an afterthought, and the lean man fell, crumpled and soundless, his blood greasing the gleaming polished wood of the rink.

There was one man left, my mother on the ground between him and Grandfather Cody. He was staring at his companions, both unconscious on the floor, but he hadn’t left yet. It took me a moment to notice the knife in his hand. It had a black handle and a bright blade, not a big knife but plenty sharp, and my mother saw it and screamed, “Dad, he’s got a knife!”

“I know it,” Grandfather Cody said calmly. Then he beckoned the knifeman toward him. “Come here. Now.”

The blade vanished, and so did its holder. He skated away so fast that he got his feet tangled and fell hard; he clambered upright, fell again, then finally made it to the wall. The crowd parted to let him flee. It seemed impossibly silent in the big room that had been cacophonous only moments earlier.

Grandfather Cody stalked across the floor, leaving bloody footprints behind, his socks stained by the blood still spreading across the rink from the man he’d pounded into the wall, and offered his hand to my mother. She took it and he lifted her to her feet easily, and they stood together, her on the skates and him in his bloody socks, and surveyed the two unconscious men and the gaping crowd.

“Are you all right?” he said.

She nodded. It was the only time I’d seen her rendered speechless.

“I think we should leave,” he said. “There’s bound to be police here. I’ll talk with them later; you don’t need to.”

Another nod. He studied her, ascertained that she was shocked but unharmed, then looked back at me.

“I’m sorry, Alford. I thought I’d left that man behind for good. You can never really do that, though, no matter how hard you try.”

I hadn’t the faintest idea what he meant. I thought he was apologizing for neutralizing only two of the three harassers. Much later I realized he was speaking of himself and that what I had viewed as a heroic—if terrifying—defense of my mother meant something else to him. He didn’t regret defending her, not for a moment. The man he was referring to, the one he’d hoped he’d left behind, was the one who delivered the second and third slams into the wall when one would’ve sufficed.

Come here, he had told the man with the knife, and there had been something in his voice that went beyond confidence and danced close to delight.

In the years since, I’ve often wondered what would’ve happened at the roller rink in Lewiston, Maine, if the man with the knife had obeyed my grandfather’s calm command.

I’m glad for everyone that he was a coward.

We left before the police arrived, and we walked in silence. After a block, my mother looped her arm through my grandfather’s. He patted her hand. Neither of them said a word. The magical comedy of their skating routine that had kicked off the night was gone, blood in its place, and while we were all still together, I should’ve known that wouldn’t last. A man named Jacob Winter had arrived in this strange mill town; Grandfather Cody had had his memory refreshed about the world he’d have to enter to find men like my father, and he would not allow a child to be at his side for the next steps of the journey. The difference was that now my mother understood the same thing. The stowaway in the Lincoln’s trunk had been evicted from the back seat; I just didn’t know it yet.

They told me the next morning, and it was clear the conversation had been held and the decision made while I slept. There was no negotiating room. My best efforts at wheedling and whining were shot down quickly and firmly, and my mother’s eyes were sympathetic but unhelpful.

“You kept saying you wanted to stay on Kineo,” Grandfather Cody said. “Well, there’s a boys’ camp up there. A couple of them. Summer’s running down, but I bet we can make an arrangement.”

“I don’t want to go to camp! I want to be with you.”

“We all have our wants, Alford. Your mother wants her charges dropped; I want to be home with your grandmother. See how everyone in the world has a want and some are more possible than others?”

He’d stymied me. I couldn’t be contentious after that one, and he knew it.

They let me stay with them while Grandfather Cody rented a room in a boardinghouse with a view of the post office and then we all got into the Lincoln and drove north, back to Moosehead Lake.

It was what I’d asked for—and a lesson in the value of keeping your mouth shut when it comes to the desires of the moment.

43

NICKEL

MAINE WAS PERFECT country, and Nickel knew it immediately. The maps hadn’t lied: It was empty, and it was green, and clean water was in every direction. For three weeks, he camped. It was a pleasure and an easy way to hide. In the deep woods, there were no Wanted posters. He also discovered a different aesthetic. Facial hair in the city was limited to a thin mustache, the style of the day, but the timbermen, farmers, and laborers in this rough country hadn’t gotten the message. Beards were everywhere, hiding faces. Nickel liked that idea.

His grew in fast, and—this was a shock to him—it grew in gray. The hair on his head was still dark, but his beard was salt-and-pepper stubble and then full gray once it filled in.

He nearly shaved it, although he’d never been a vain man. There was something ominous in the gray hair, he thought, some taunt of lost youth, but he talked himself into setting down the razor, because what mattered more than youth was anonymity, and if even he didn’t recognize himself in the mirror, strangers certainly wouldn’t.

As the days went by, he grew almost fond of the wild gray beard.

Almost.

In a town called Bethel, he found a sporting-goods store and bought a canvas tent and camping essentials. He had a story prepared about his plans for trout fishing, but the bored clerk didn’t ask. After acquiring the gear and a fresh box of bullets for his pistol, Nickel still had more than seven thousand dollars. The pistol was one of two weapons he’d brought with him. The other was the Darne shotgun, the beautiful but broken French piece. He knew it was a mistake to keep it—it was easily traceable to the house in Baltimore—but he was determined to clean it and fix it, and a man with a shotgun in Maine did not stand out as he might in other parts of the country. He took the train as far east as Lewiston, thinking he’d set up the post office box in the name of Jacob Winter as promised and then continue on to the coast.

He did the former but not the latter. There was something off about Lewiston; the mill town reminded him of Baltimore in micro scale, someone’s toy train version of a real city, and there were just enough police around to make him edgy. The textile mills put a clatter through narrow, crowded streets, and the air was thick with the smells of machine oil and damp, processed cotton. Across the Androscoggin River, a sister city, Auburn, offered more of the same. Nickel heard as much French as English spoken, which added to his dissonance. He liked the great falls, where the water thundered with the force it had been coerced into offering for the mills. The water seemed angry about the trick, mist rising like the river was steaming mad.

At a tavern on Lisbon Street, beneath the belching stacks of the pulp mills, he heard loud, drunken men telling tales of massive trout they’d hauled up from beneath three—no, four; hell, it was five!—feet of ice in winter at Moosehead Lake. One of the mill workers told another that he wouldn’t have caught a single fucking fish up at Moosehead if he hadn’t hired the local guide. That nearly provoked a fight between the friends, and it aroused Nickel’s memories of Jake Sietke and tourists with fat billfolds getting off trains in the Kankakee.

Good days.

The sensory shock of Lewiston and the reference to a fishing guide in the woods rerouted him, and the next morning, he aborted his journey east to the coast and headed north instead, bound for Moosehead Lake, feeling some risk to it, as it was the one place in Maine he’d spoken of, but taking comfort in the knowledge that he’d shared the idea with only Savannah Cody and she’d never taken him seriously.

He loved the place the moment he set eyes on it. The sheer scale was impressive—eight miles long, with more than eighty islands—but there was also something truly untamed about the country. Most important, the strangers outnumbered the locals. It was a summer place, and while he might stand out in the winter, he didn’t now. He found a peaceful brook that fed downhill from a tall, rounded mountain and there he made camp on a gravel beach. The closest neighbors, if you could call them that, were the city boys in the cabins and bunkhouses of a summer camp. He bought a spinning rod and a fly rod and all the tackle he might need, and he knew that for the rest of the summer, at least, he would be safe, hidden and happy. Then the weather would turn and the lake resorts would empty and the strange, bearded man coming into town for groceries purchased with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cash would attract attention.

That was a while off, though. The other side of Labor Day, at least, maybe all the way through September, when the leaves changed and men exchanged their fishing rods for shotguns. He could have the Darne in working order by then, maybe blend in a little longer. Once, at the campfire in the night, he caught himself thinking wistfully that Al Brady and James Dalhover and Clarence Shaffer might get themselves arrested or killed at some point and then he wouldn’t have to consider a reunion.

Then he reminded himself they were the only loyal friends he’d ever known, and the next day he walked to Greenville Junction, boarded the train for Lewiston, and checked the post office box of Jacob Winter.

There was no mail. He sent postcards, writing nothing on them, the cards a mere proof of life. He’d already forgotten what name Dalhover was going under but figured if they hadn’t been caught yet, Dalhover would remain with Brady, so they’d be together when they got word from Nickel.

They hadn’t been caught. The manhunt faded from the front page, but it was never gone entirely. The gang stayed in the wind. He wondered if it could go on like that, each of them leading his own life, never to meet again, but knew that it could not.

They’d join forces again, always had, always would. Brady would put out the call, and he’d have a destination in mind, a bank or a jewelry store. Nickel shouldn’t respond, but he would. When a man came back to the county jail and shot you out of it, you answered his call. There were certain ethics to this thing, even on the gunslinger’s side of the ledger.

Nevertheless, he wasn’t disappointed when his postcards went unanswered.

People mostly kept their distance from him, and his new appearance—hunter’s trousers, flannel shirts, a canvas jacket in the cool evenings and mornings, and that scragglier-by-the-day gray beard—gave him the air of a hermit, which suited him. He worried over the guns and wondered if they might attract more attention than he expected, even up here in hunting country. It wasn’t hunting season yet. He thought he could fix that with a dog. A good bird hunter trained his dog before autumn.

Of course, that would mean leaving the dog behind when the letter from Al Brady finally arrived, and Nickel always hated to do that. He needed more of his own father in him.

One day, when he got off the train in Greenville Junction following a mail run to Lewiston, he saw a piece of cardboard stapled to a utility pole: GENUINE LLEWELLIN SETTER PUPS, PURE NATURAL HUNTING PROWERS.

The odds of a purebred Llewellin in this country seemed slim, but the dog suited his cover story. He wondered whether the misspelled word was meant to be powers or prowess and decided it didn’t matter.

He went to find the dogs.

There were three pups left out of a litter of six, and the man who was selling them, small and stooped, with tobacco-stained fingers and suspenders worn over a yellowed undershirt, insisted they were “the gold standard, gen-yoo-wine royalty,” bred from the dogs of some famous tourist, maybe a Vanderbilt en route to Bar Harbor or perhaps a Rockefeller. He wanted seventy-five dollars, dropped that quickly to fifty when Nickel headed for the door, and took thirty-five. The dog was white with copper ears and patching, which the old man assured Nickel made her an orange belton, even more prized.

“Just looks brown to me,” Nickel said.

“Bull. Those marks are as orange as the damn Moxie man’s drink.” The old-timer tapped on the vibrant orange label of the soda bottle in his hand.

The name took care of itself then. The pup was Moxie. Hell, you had to call a dog something, and Nickel—as evidenced by his current alias—had never been good with names.

What he was good with? Dogs. And this one was a smart pup and a fast learner. A dog that minded you was worth a whole litter of purebreds. The dog had good curiosity but wasn’t impulsive. Her terrain sense was strong too; she favored the easier route and the quieter one.

“You could drive for Al Brady,” Nickel told her, and the dog’s pink tongue appeared between impossibly white puppy teeth, like she was grinning back at him, in on the joke.

He would hate to abandon her, but he could do it. He was a long way from home and the boy he’d once been, and he knew that he could leave the pup without a moment’s pause when Brady summoned him. Scar tissue had its value, sure as the bullet wound in his leg promised. Until then, though, the dog was a useful disguise for Nickel’s alleged sportsman’s persona and training her was a fine way to pass the time. The summer air in Maine was as crisp as an Indiana October, the manhunt had faded from the front page, and it was easy to believe in good things.

Then he returned to Lewiston.

A fisherman learns a feeling, once he has done it enough, of an impending strike. It can come after hours without a bite and suddenly there’s a sense, as the fly settles on the water, that this time is different. No logic to it. Just a tingle, like an electrical pulse. Nickel had the same feeling when he checked his mail at the Lewiston post office on the last weekend of August.

The clerk was familiar—a young, nervous type, polite but always high-strung, like he’d had too much coffee—but his expression had changed. Nickel thought maybe it was a response to his ever-thickening gray beard, the Paul Bunyan look he was developing, but that wasn’t it. Something else.

Looking at him, then away. Remembering him.

There was mail in the box, first time that had been the case. A sealed envelope, no return address. Baltimore postmark, though. He pocketed it, then prepared to send his own mail. Removed two blank postcards, one with a picture of a lighthouse, the other with a forest scene, nothing on the backs but the addresses to and from. The clerk leaned against the counter and extended his hand for them. Feeling an eagerness in the reach that troubled him, Nickel drew back.

“Not sending those?” the clerk asked, puzzled.

Nickel forced a smile. “Just realized I hadn’t scribbled my notes yet.”

“Happens to me all the time,” the postal clerk said, but Nickel had seen his eyes, and he had been looking for the names and addresses, not at the spot where the message belonged. When he looked at Nickel’s face again, his smile seemed as forced as Nickel’s felt. Why?

Nickel looked out at the street. A woman was weeding a garden outside a row house; an old man was weaving down the sidewalk, reading a newspaper while he walked, tempting fate. Nobody in the mix looked like a government agent or a cop.

Still, something was wrong. He felt conspicuous in his dirty denim and his flannel shirt that was perfect for the camp by Moosehead Lake but too warm here in the city. Suddenly he missed his campsite in the way you miss something that you know you’ll never see again.

He put the postcards back in the pocket of his flannel shirt.

“I’ve got a pen,” the clerk said.

“So do I,” Nickel said. “I just need more time to write. Take care.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Winter.”

Mr. Winter. The man knew his name, that was fine, but had he ever said it before? Nickel thought not. He turned from the counter to the door, scanning the street again, looking for signs of surveillance.

“Mr. Winter?”

He stopped. Looked back. The clerk wasn’t looking at him anymore, had his head down, sorting mail, and he lifted a brown manila envelope in the air.

“This is yours too.”

“Oh?” Nickel didn’t move to take it.

The clerk looked up and frowned, impatient now. He shook the envelope and raised his eyebrows, a Get on with it expression.

Nickel came back and took the envelope. The return address was Biddeford, Maine, no place he knew. That gave him pause, and then he looked at the scrawled address in the center of the envelope: Jacob Minter, box 217.

“Wrong name, wrong box,” Nickel said.

“Huh?” The clerk looked down, seemed to read it for the first time, and blushed. “Sorry. My eyes are blurring.”

“Sure,” Nickel said. He dropped the envelope on the counter and looked back at the street. Same woman in the garden, nobody else in view, and yet the tingle was stronger now, that sense that he got watching a dry fly settling on quiet water and knowing, just knowing, that there was action coming out of the depths.

He pushed open the door and stepped out into the summer heat, expecting a bullet to greet him, the bullet wound in his leg pulsing as if putting out a call for friends.

No shots came. No men rushed up with badges. The street was quiet, midday, midweek.

It all felt wrong, though.

He skipped his standard route back to the Lewiston train station and instead walked across the big bridge and all the way into Auburn, then took a different train to a different town before heading north. By then he was content that he wasn’t being followed, but the unease hadn’t left him. He felt a little better once he was alone in the dark woods outside Greenville Junction. It was a cloudy night and he had no light because he’d expected to return to his camp before dusk. He picked his way up the creek, pausing often to listen for pursuers but hearing none. The dog, Moxie, whined when he was within a hundred yards. The pup was right by the front flap of the canvas tent. He’d been gone long enough that she could’ve chewed off the thin tether if she’d wished, but she’d stayed, waiting for him. Now he sat in the darkness and scratched her soft ears and let her lay her head against his thigh. It was cool again, the flannel finally welcome, but he’d sweated through it all day and could smell himself, a smell like fear.

Maybe he’d imagined the clerk’s reaction.

Maybe not.

He’d had Al Brady’s letter in his pocket all day but had been unwilling to open it on the train. Now he fired the lantern and by its white light he studied the envelope carefully. No sign that it had been opened and resealed. You learned what that looked like with inspected prison mail. He sliced the top with a knife and withdrew the single sheet of folded stationery as gingerly as if it might explode. The stationery was from the Ambassador Hotel and the handwriting was Al’s.

Hope all is well in the woods. We are having a swell time here but need to close some deals. Think the factory will be ready by October? Going to need fresh lumber soon.

He read it twice, thinking that maybe lumber meant guns or maybe it meant money and then realizing it didn’t matter, they were all the same. He could answer or he could ignore it.

What would he do if he ignored it? Wait for winter?

He didn’t leave the camp for the next two days and when he finally left, it wasn’t to head to Lewiston. He would never go there again. He went to Bangor, a new town in a new direction on a new train, and there he rented a new post office box, this one under the name of Bob Montgomery, generic, no tie to anyone living or dead. Al Brady would understand.

For the first time, Nickel included a message on his postcard.

Scouting timber, he wrote, let me know how much you need. Also, get a new address. I don’t trust your postman.

There was a sporting-goods store in downtown Bangor, a place called Dakin’s, and he bought some essentials there, camping goods and fresh fishing line. He noted the store’s ample supply of firearms and ammunition. They were prepared to outfit you for big game. That would please Al. Nickel found himself rubbing his leg down where the bullet had entered and inexplicably thinking of the doctor’s redheaded wife, the way she’d gazed at Nickel with such curiosity—excitement?—before the guns had been drawn. The clerk saw him looking at shotguns and tried to push one on him.

“I’ve got a project piece,” Nickel said. “An old Darne.”

“A what, now?”

“French bird gun.”

“Know how you can spot the Frenchman at a cockfight?”

“No.”

“He’s the one with the duck.”

Nickel smiled. “Know how you can tell the Polish guy there?”

The clerk’s eyes brightened. “No.”

“He bets on the duck.”

The clerk gave that a bigger laugh than it deserved, and then, with the mood light, Nickel decided to ask if the store traded in used weapons too or only new ones.

“All of ’em. You want something special, I’ll track it down. Parts for that French gun might be hard to find, but I’ll do it.”

Nickel thanked him and walked out. The street in front of the store was brick, and old trolley tracks were embedded in it, although the city no longer had trolleys. It was cheaper to leave the tracks to rust than to remove them, evidently. Nickel walked back to the train station and took the Boston and Maine line to Greenville Junction, thinking it was time to get a car. Something nondescript and befitting a woodsman of the look he’d developed. An old truck, maybe. He was pondering this when he hiked up the creek to his camp. Moxie didn’t whine in her happy way at his approach. Had she run off? Then he stepped out of the pines and found the dog wasn’t missing—she was on her back, all four paws in the air, tongue lolling, delighted.

Distracted by a thin boy who was rubbing her belly.

44

NICKEL

NICKEL STOPPED SHORT. The dog sensed him, rolled over, and gave a bark of recognition. That got the kid’s attention, and he stepped back and looked at Nickel apprehensively. He was maybe ten years old, whip-thin, with blue eyes and hair dark as ink. He was dressed in a uniform, olive pants and a khaki shirt and a green scarf knotted around the neck. Nickel knew the outfit. There was a summer camp on the lake that required such silly clothes. The boys canoed and hiked and always made noise that scared the wildlife they were attempting to see. But they traveled in groups, not alone.

“You lost?” Nickel asked.

The kid didn’t say anything for a minute. Moxie came up and licked Nickel’s hand. As her tail thumped, the boy relaxed, evidently convinced the dog was a fine judge of character.

“No, sir. I mean—well. I was hiking.”

“By yourself?”

The kid hesitated, guilt plain on his face, and Nickel felt a sudden kinship with him. He knew the look. He’d lived it.

“You ran off.”

The kid seemed surprised. Nickel lifted a hand.

“Hell, it’s not my concern.”

It was, though. If a kid went missing from the camp, they’d send folks out in a hurry, and if they didn’t find him right away, they’d send wardens or police.

“I’m not in trouble for it,” the boy said. “They won’t let me go along on the trips anyhow. I’m too young for the camp.”

“Then how’d you get into it?”

Consternation on the kid’s face, some kind of grief.

“My grandfather paid them. I can stay there but they won’t let me do anything. It’s a dumb rule. Anyhow, I wasn’t trying to bother your camp. I saw the dog and…”

As if on cue, Moxie abandoned Nickel, bounded back to the boy, rose up, and, with surprising gentleness, placed both forepaws briefly on the kid’s chest, leaving great muddy paw prints on the khaki scout’s shirt. The kid’s laugh was pure joy. It made Nickel think of the boys playing baseball in the street while the doctor in Indianapolis pulled the bullet out of his leg.

“What kind is she?” the boy asked.

“English setter. A Llewellin, they told me, but I wouldn’t put much stock in that.”

“Llewellin,” the boy echoed, trying the word out. “What’s that mean?”

“Means the man who buys the dog has more money than brains.”

The kid laughed. He had an easy way with strangers that Nickel thought would likely get him in trouble later in life. You never knew who might walk up on you in the woods. Why, it could be a wanted man.

Still, he liked the kid. Why? Because the dog did. She behaved differently around the boy than she did with Nickel, was more playful, showing herself for the puppy she was. She’d been obedient but restrained with Nickel, and there was something about that he didn’t care for because it reminded him of his father’s dogs and made him fear that some of the old man had bled into him, that there was something in him that a smart dog could smell, something different. He had never once hurt an animal.

“What’s her name?” the kid asked.

“I call her Moxie.”

“Like that soda.”

“Yeah, like that. She’s got the orange touches in her coat, you see ’em?”

“Sure.” The kid squatted down and scratched the dog’s ears and Moxie flopped onto her back again, letting him love her. She pinned his hand with her paws and put her teeth to his wrist, but it was the gentle, playful nip of a puppy, and he treated it as such, with laughter and grinning. Nickel looked at the setting sun.

“They’re gonna miss you up at that camp. Dinnertime, probably.”

The joy went out of the kid like Nickel had snuffed out his lantern.

“Why’d you get sent up there if you’re too young?” Nickel asked. It wasn’t his nature to be curious, but he’d once been lost in the woods too, back there at the Nickel Plate Gun Club when his father forgot him and took the booze wagon southbound alone.

“They got things to do,” the kid mumbled, and now he seemed guarded, a keeper of secrets. Nickel could relate.

“Not my business,” Nickel said, trying to put him at ease. The kid sat silently, still playing with the dog but looking distant now.

“She’s a good dog,” he said at length.

“We’ll find out in hunting season,” Nickel said.

“What will she hunt?”

“Birds, ideally. If she goes after a bear, we’re both in trouble.”

That got another laugh. Nickel had a strange appreciation for the boy’s laugh. It was an unencumbered sound, far less troubled than his face.

“You can come on back to see her if you want,” he offered, trying to get rid of the kid without putting fear into him.

This pleased the boy. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”

“Don’t get in trouble over it, but it’s no skin off my nose.”

“I won’t get in trouble. They don’t even know that I’m gone.”

“Enjoy that,” Nickel said. “It’s better than being chased.”

The kid gave him a surprised, keen stare that made Nickel want the remark back.

“I mean, there are worse places to be left alone than in the woods in Maine,” Nickel said.

“I guess.” The kid straightened, brushed at the muddy paw prints on his shirt, then said, “You’ll be here tomorrow?”

“Probably.”

“You’re fishing?”

“That’s right.”

Too many questions coming now, but Nickel was trying to stay patient.

“What’s your name?”

Nickel started with Bob Montgomery, then thought of the postcard he’d just dropped in the mail in Bangor and decided that was no good. Jacob Winter was no better, but Jake, as in Jake Sietke, the old fishing guide, that was okay.

“Jake,” he said. “Who are you?”

The kid opened his mouth, closed it, scuffed his shoe in the dirt, and said, “Dan. Dan Hyland.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Dan Hyland, and thanks for working with my wolf. She needs to be socialized.”

The kid smiled at hearing Moxie called a wolf.

“She’s a good dog.”

“Like I said, we’ll find out in hunting season.”

“When’s that?”

Nickel wasn’t sure, truth be told, and this was a good reminder to pay attention to such things. He could lie to the kid but not to a warden or a local. That would attract the wrong kind of interest.

“South of September,” he said, waving it off like it didn’t matter. “Go on and get back to that camp before they send a posse out for you.”

“Sure,” the kid said. “Okay. Thanks for letting me play with her, Mr.…”

“Jake,” Nickel said. One name was enough.

“Jake.” The kid gave Moxie a final scratch and trudged on up the trail in the direction of the summer camp. It was a long walk and Nickel thought that if his story was true, he had to be a lonely kid. The story probably was true. Nickel had seen the other boys throughout the summer, all big kids, teenagers who dwarfed this one. Some disinterested grandpa had greased a counselor’s palm to send young Dan Hyland up here to be ignored at best, beaten up at worst.

The dog whined, watching the boy fade beyond the tree line. She liked him and had no fear of him. Why was she so careful around Nickel? It was a question he wished he could rid from his mind.

He got to work building a campfire. When the dog sat beside him and leaned against his leg, he was grateful. There was no harm in him. He hoped she could believe that. Hoped anyone could.

Then again, it was a lie.

“Smart dog,” he said, stroking her back. “You’re a real smart dog. There’s nobody worse than people, is there?”

45

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: Why were you so confident that Jacob Winter in Lewiston was really Nickel? Had he used the alias before?

No. But it made sense to me, because he had her on his mind.

Toland: Had who on his mind?

My mother, of course. He’d been to the burial. He’d brought his Virginia bluebells. I say he had her on his mind, but what I really mean is he had me on his mind. I suspect we were both turning the same question over and over in our heads: What if she’d been tolerant? What if she’d been able to see him for who he was rather than who she thought he was? Just because the rest of the Terhunes in the valley were corrupt didn’t mean Eddie had to be. For a woman who spoke so often of forgiveness, she couldn’t abide the idea in connection with Eddie. It just made sense to me that he and I were thinking about the same things and asking ourselves the same questions.

Toland: It was the violence in Lewiston that led you to send the boy back to Moosehead Lake?

His name is Alford Terhune, thank you, and it wasn’t the violence that led to my decision; it was the violence that helped me show my father that we couldn’t keep him with us if we were truly closing in on Al Brady and James Dalhover.

Toland: You’re leaving Nickel out.

Of course I’m leaving Eddie out. He isn’t like those men, never was. He just fell in among them. When it comes to matters of the heart, he was—is—nothing like them. I should know. But what wasn’t clear from the name at the post office was whether he was alone or if they were all still together. My instinct was that they were together. It seemed odd to separate after the Saratoga robbery. I mean, it makes sense to a normal person, but they weren’t normal thinkers at that point. They were fugitives, prey. They were being hunted. You don’t want to be alone when you’re being hunted.

I think a perfect example of how Eddie is different from the rest is that he chose to head to the woods. The others, they went right back to the lives they knew. Eddie went searching for something solitary. Something more like childhood. Like innocence.

Toland: Quite a romantic description of a man on the run after a jailbreak, a murder, and more than a hundred robberies.

The thing about romance is that it doesn’t have to be fictional, Agent Toland. There’s romance in reality all around you if you care to look. I never said that Eddie was without sin. I’m simply explaining that his heart was different than the others’. Moosehead Lake, to my mind, proves it more than anything. I don’t know how you can sit there and say it was coincidence, what happened. Here he is, hiding in the woods a thousand miles from the last place I saw him, the place we met, and yet I deliver his son to him almost down to the mile. You can know such a thing and not believe in fate?

Toland: I don’t believe it’s coincidence either.

That’s because you’re cynical at best and foolish at worst. Look at a map of the country. Look at where Eddie and I met along the Ohio River—where Alford was conceived and born—and then look at the shores of Moosehead Lake in Maine. Such a distance! So many places in between. And yet when I felt my son was in danger, that’s where I brought him.

Toland: But you knew the place. You’d been plotting to go there with Nickel Terhune for years, the way you tell it.

Plotting… I swear, you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. This is your last chance to hear it, for anyone to hear it! You can use words like plotting, and I’ll use words like fate. Here’s what I knew about Moosehead Lake: It had been a useful dream when Eddie was locked up in Michigan City, a place he picked, sight unseen, and held on to in his mind. There’s a word for that too. Do you know what it is?

Toland: Hideout.

The word is dream, Agent Toland. The word is dream. Eddie spent all those awful nights in that awful prison dreaming of somewhere he could be free and clean and start new. But once you’re there… it’s such a small place. Well, that’s not accurate, it’s huge, but there aren’t many people there. You have the big hotel on the island and some boardinghouses and some summer camps. It’s a wilderness. We’d already searched for him, and no one had seen him, and so I believed—the same way your agents did, by the way—that he was nowhere in the area.

And yet my son took to that spot like I’d never seen him take to anywhere before. Now, he wasn’t happy about being sent to the summer camp, I won’t deny that. He wanted to stay with us, to ride the roads with me and Dad, the same way I’d wanted the summer to linger before the news broke about Saratoga Springs. But if there was anywhere he could be happy alone while we were back in Lewiston, it was on that lake.

His father was waiting for him there.

Think about that!

You use words like plotting and hideout. It’s so cynical. You could use words like fate and dream. Either way, they lead to the same place. They lead to the shores of Moosehead Lake.

Toland: I could use the word melodrama too. That’s how plausible your whole tale is.

Funny you should mention that word. You were with Melvin Purvis on the team that tracked Dillinger down, weren’t you? That means you of all people should know the truth about Johnnie Dillinger, the gangster, public enemy number one, gunned down outside a movie theater after he was betrayed by a woman in red. How’s that for a fantasy story, by the way? And yet it happened. Now, do you remember the movie they were watching? I can see that you do. You don’t want to admit it, but we both know it. In the minutes before he died, Dillinger watched Manhattan Melodrama, a gangster film about a man bound for the electric chair. That story is implausible, and yet it’s what happened. Millions of people were waiting to see what would happen to Johnnie, and how many of them do you think would’ve written that ending? But it’s the truth.

Do you remember what happens to the William Powell character in that movie, the gangster who’s headed for the electric chair? His sentence is commuted at the last minute by his old friend—played by Clark Gable—the one in power, the one who can find the humanity in himself.

Think I’ll be so lucky?

You don’t have to answer that. We both know.

46

NICKEL

IT WAS DAWN when Moxie whined and Nickel looked up and saw the boy coming down the hill.

“You said I could come back.” Tentative, as if asking for permission.

“I did. You run off again or did they just turn you loose?”

“Well, I’m supposed to stay on the grounds, but they don’t mind much if I don’t, as long as I show up at dinner. It’s the end of the season. They’re all going on a long canoe trip tomorrow. It’ll be just me and the cook then.”

He let a trace of bitterness creep into his voice.

“Doesn’t sound like much fun,” Nickel allowed.

“It’s awful. I was supposed to be with my mother and grandpa, but…” He stopped, then shrugged and sighed. “Anyhow, that’s over for now.”

Nickel didn’t want to press the kid. The more they talked, the more lies Nickel needed to keep straight.

“Well, if you can keep your mouth shut, you can help me train this foolish hound,” he said. “Think you can handle that?”

He said it in a friendly way, teasing, and the kid took it as such, offering a grin that broke his sullen expression.

“I know the art of silence,” he said.

The art of silence. This kid.

“That’s a good art to learn,” Nickel said. He didn’t mind the kid being back, because it was a distraction, and he’d been troubled all morning over the impending arrival of Al Brady and James Dalhover in Maine. Scouting for timber, sure. What they wanted was him, and he needed to accept that. Could be one of them had been arrested and was cooperating to capture the others. No, that didn’t track. If the FBI had arrested one of those boys, it would be front-page news, and Hoover wouldn’t trade publicity like that to trap Nickel Terhune.

They worked the dog for an hour. Moxie had plenty of energy to burn beyond that, but you couldn’t do too much at once. Right now, it was all about the walking time, keeping her on the long check cord and giving gentle tugs and a “Whoa” when she pursued a distraction. She flushed a few songbirds and gave chase, providing a good opportunity for correction, but already she was past pursuing squirrels and chipmunks. Once they’d stumbled on a grouse, and the dog held a point.

“She did it!” Dan Hyland cried, and his voice flushed the bird, which led to Moxie barking and provided a learning opportunity for both the dog and the boy.

“You’ve got to keep quiet, praise her real soft,” Nickel explained. “First she holds the point, then she’ll learn to hold her poise.”

The kid was chagrined and apologetic.

“It was a fluke,” Nickel said. “Next time, we’ll all know better.”

“How did you teach her to do it, though? To stand like that, I mean?”

“I didn’t. That’s in the blood. The bad habits can be trained out of her, but the good ones, they’re part of the standard equipment.”

“That’s amazing,” the kid said.

Nickel had to agree that it was. He’d thought he’d overpaid for the dog originally, but she was the most natural in the field he’d ever seen.

“She’ll be ready for gun training before most,” he said.

“How do you do that?”

“Small-caliber pistol shots to start, then work up to bird shell. Way she holds a point, I’d be surprised if she flinches much at the gun after a day or two. She is smart.”

As if to contradict him, the dog promptly sprang into a puddle, splashing dark bog water. The kid laughed—that unrestrained, joyful laugh that made Nickel smile despite himself.

“How many guns do you have?” Dan asked a moment later, and Nickel regretted bringing the subject up. He supposed it was a natural question for the kid, but still, Nickel would rather not talk of guns.

“It’s too early for that,” he said. “She’s got to get used to the terrain and birds before we worry about guns.”

They developed a routine of sorts. The boy would show up in the midmorning, after breakfast at the camp, and they’d work the dog. Sometimes he’d come back in the afternoon. Nickel taught him how to use the fly rod, wincing at the first amateur efforts, then reminding himself of Jake Sietke’s patience all those years ago.

“It’s not like chucking night crawlers into an Indiana farm pond,” he said. “The line does the work, not your shoulder.”

The kid gave him a curious look, seemed a little unsettled, and Nickel assured him that it was a tough craft to master, that it took practice.

“Why’d you say Indiana?”

Now what in the hell had made that stand out to the boy? Nickel, knowing better than to acknowledge anything about his roots, simply shrugged.

“Figure they got ponds, right? I don’t know. The point is, a fly rod is a fine-tuned instrument, not a stick. You’ve got to learn to work with it. Partners.”

“Collaborators,” the kid said.

Nickel frowned at the word. The kid was always saying strange things like that, delivering lines that sounded like something out of a book, like he was sitting on a front-porch rocking chair holding a pipe, an old man in a boy’s body. Mostly, it made Nickel chuckle. But collaborators called to mind newspaper articles and radio reports.

It would be bad trouble if young Dan Hyland read too many newspapers.

Labor Day came and went. The boys’ camp closed, all the teenagers went back to school, most of them taking trains to southern cities, New York or Boston. Dan Hyland stayed, though, reporting that his grandfather had arranged for him to remain on the grounds with the staff, who were busy with construction.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school yourself?” Nickel asked.

“Yeah. I’ll go back when… well, when they’re ready to leave.”

“What’s keeping them?”

“A project.” The kid’s tone made it plain that he didn’t want to discuss the subject. Nickel obligingly dropped it.

The days were growing cooler and shorter. Leaves were starting to turn, first the young maples showing fire red, then the birches yellowing. Nickel repaired the Darne shotgun, a task that had occupied his days when the kid wasn’t around. It was a beautiful piece, and he couldn’t imagine how it had come to be in a Baltimore basement, busted and forgotten. He was proud of himself for putting it back together, and he spent extra time shining it up, polishing the barrel and trigger pieces and putting fresh varnish on the stock. The kid was enamored with the shotgun, which made sense—what boy his age wasn’t crazy about guns?—but Nickel didn’t let him handle it, even though he was old enough. Nickel had been about his age when Jake Sietke taught him to shoot. It would be nice, Nickel thought, to repay that old lesson… but for some reason he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

He liked watching the boy with the fly rod, though. He’d come a long way in a hurry with that craft, and he had a nice, smooth motion now, cadence to his casting. The fish rose and hit and he brought in some nice ones, fine fighting trout that Nickel cleaned and fried in a skillet. During one of those meals, the kid got more inquisitive than usual, and Nickel had to invent a backstory for himself. He decided it was easier just to be from Maine. He liked Bangor better than Lewiston so he claimed that as his home city.

“You have family there?”

“No.”

“No family at all?”

“Nope. All dead and gone.”

“Don’t you get lonely?”

“I have a dog.”

“I guess.”

“You lonely?” Nickel asked, seeing the forlorn look in the kid’s eyes.

“A little, sure. I miss my grandfather. My mother too, but… well, I was always around my grandparents the most.”

“Where’s your dad?” Nickel asked, then regretted it, because the boy’s eyes showed an immediate wound.

“Don’t worry about it,” Nickel said. “My old man wasn’t worth a tin shit, so I’d just as soon not talk about fathers.”

Dan Hyland seemed grateful for that. While Nickel rolled a cigarette, the boy went searching for stones, but this time he didn’t skip them across the water, as he typically did. He brought back two flat pieces of shale, thin as roof shingles but strong, and a stub of granite. Curious, Nickel lit the cigarette and watched. The boy was trying to carve on the flat stone with the stub but not having much luck.

“That shale’s harder than the stone you’re working it with,” Nickel observed. “Here, try a coin.”

He fished a dime from his pocket and tossed it. Dan Hyland caught it neatly and then bowed back to his work, etching the flat stone with precise strokes. Watching him through the smoke from the cigarette, Nickel felt an eerie prickle rise along his spine, like a winter wind.

“What are you doing?”

“It’s just a silly game.”

“What game.” Nickel tried to keep his voice steady, but the boy picked up on his tension and looked up, puzzled.

“You write down a bad thing. Or something you don’t want in your life. Maybe that’s the better way to say it. Not bad, necessarily, just… something you’d change. Then you throw it in the water—”

He demonstrated, plunking the stone into the creek.

“And it’s gone.” He gave a half laugh and shrugged. “Like I said, just silly.”

“I remember that game,” Nickel said, feeling a strange disappointment. The prickle along his spine had risen because he’d believed Savannah Cody all those years ago when she’d claimed the game was her own invention. How many times had Nickel etched his father’s name on a rock and flung it into the mill pond? The trick didn’t work, of course, but there was a peacefulness to watching the stone sink, particularly when the girl you loved was sitting beside you, her thigh brushing yours. He should have suspected it was a game that others knew, but he couldn’t help the strange, sorrowful sense of betrayal. It had been their game on their private nights.

Perfect nights.

“Here,” Dan Hyland said, and he rose and offered Nickel the second piece of shale and the dime. “You take a turn. Don’t tell me what you write, though. If you do, it won’t come true.”

Nickel’s mouth was dry and the cigarette made it worse, so he stubbed the fresh smoke out and sat holding the dime in one hand and the stone in the other. The boy had retreated a respectful distance but continued watching.

What to write? Choices, maybe. No, that was too small. Life? No, that was both too large and outright wrong. He’d enjoyed good days and good nights. Hell, this was one of them. He was in a beautiful spot in the world, free, with a cool wind on his face. He could etch the word crimes but the boy might see that even in the fading light. What in the hell was Nickel thinking, taking this foolishness seriously? He dropped the stone and put the dime in his pocket.

“I’m too old for games.”

Dan Hyland’s disappointment was conveyed without words, just a single forlorn look. Damn. Nickel sighed and tried a different tack.

“The way I played it was easier, that’s all,” he said. “You simply threw a coin and made a wish. Kept the writing minimal, which I appreciated, never having been a spelling bee champion.”

That earned him a small smile. He dug in his pocket for a coin to make good on his improvised version of the game and came out with a silver dollar. He was about to toss that when he realized the boy might think it was wasteful, pitching a whole dollar into a creek, and that could conjure risky questions. He tried again for the dime but came out with a nickel instead. Good enough.

Actually, he realized as he pinched it between his thumb and forefinger, it was perfect. The one coin that said it all.

“What’s wrong?” Dan Hyland said.

“Huh?”

“You look sad.”

“No, no. I just… I’m making my wish.” He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, like a boy readying to blow out the candles on a birthday cake, an opportunity he’d never personally had, his family not being one for celebrations. Then he opened his eyes and snapped his fingers and sent the nickel spinning through the cool night air, glittering like a comet. It struck the water going hard and fast and then refused to sink, skittering across the surface like a carefully spun stone, and Dan Hyland gave a cry of delight as the coin took high, sparkling bounces, six, maybe seven, before it struck a red-tinted rock and caromed off it into a deep pool covered by long shadows.

“It almost made it across!” Dan hollered.

Nickel grinned, pleased that the boy was acting his age again.

“Made it farther with that coin than you can make it with a stone, I’ll wager.”

“No chance!” And with that, the kid was back to the creek’s bank, scrounging for the right rock to toss. Good: No more games of counted sorrows. Nickel found his cigarette in the dirt, wiped it as clean as he could, and relit it.

They never spoke of the game again, which was just as well. Mostly, they focused on the dog. She was promising—better than Nickel liked to admit to Dan, because he wanted the boy to see how hard it was to raise a dog properly—and days passed quickly. It was well into September when the kid reported that his mother would be visiting the next day.

“Maybe my grandfather too.”

“Come to pack you up and get you out of here?” Nickel asked, feeling an odd pang of sadness at the idea. He’d grown to enjoy the kid’s company.

“I don’t think so. Not yet.”

“What’re they waiting on?”

“Hard to say.”

“Oh?”

There was something secretive about the boy that he didn’t understand. It was usually easy for Nickel to mind his own business, but he was curious what the kid’s family did and why he took such pains to keep it private. Maybe they were moonshiners, like Nickel’s old man. Wouldn’t that be something? Except there was no chance this polite, smart kid came from a bad family. Just one that didn’t want him around.

“Work,” Dan said. “I don’t know all the details. They’ve got a project.”

“The two of them work together?”

Another hesitation. “Yeah. Kind of.”

Nickel knew better than to push.

“Maybe they’ll take you with them now that the camp is closed,” he said. “If I don’t see you again, thanks for the help with the dog. I’m grateful.”

He tried to pay the boy five dollars.

“I can’t take that,” Dan said. “I haven’t done anything.”

“You’ve done plenty. She needed to be socialized with someone other than me.”

The kid was adamant that he wouldn’t take the money, though. Good for him. It was better not to be ruled by the almighty dollar.

The next day, knowing Dan wouldn’t come ambling through the woods to visit, Nickel headed to Bangor to check the post office box of Bob Montgomery. He took the morning train, arrived just before noon, and found a letter waiting. He had a sinking feeling, seeing the familiar penmanship: Al Brady.

How’s the timber looking? Time for some fresh lumber. Find a good stand and we’ll head north.

Fresh lumber. Did he mean banks to rob or guns to do it with? Nickel guessed the latter. Al Brady could always find a bank, but guns were harder to come by without attracting attention, and the man loved firepower more than any other gangster Nickel had ever known, was never content with just a pistol, even though a pistol was plenty.

Nickel wrote back and suggested Brady take on a new address and new name and said there was plenty of lumber to be had in Maine.

He ate a hamburger at a picnic table near the city’s giant canal, cool wind in the air, summer blowing out, autumn rushing in. Hunting season loomed, and that was good cover, but it also marked the end of things. He couldn’t winter out here without attracting attention. Besides, Al was getting restless. They were gone from the front page of the papers, vanished like Amelia Earhart, and that would make Al Brady both cocky and disappointed. He didn’t want to let the public forget about him. He was, after all, public enemy number one, and you couldn’t hold on to the championship belt without taking fresh fights.

He headed back to the sporting-goods store, Dakin’s, walking up the old and now useless trolley tracks in the brick street. The clerk who’d told him the joke about the duck at the cockfight was there again, and he remembered Nickel’s old shotgun and asked if he’d made any progress. While they talked about the Darne, Nickel bought a box of shells and a bigger leather collar for Moxie.

“Last time I was in here, you said you could get most any gun?” Nickel asked.

“Sure. What’re you looking for?”

“Something bigger than a deer rifle.” Testing it, seeing if the guy would express suspicion.

“Moose or bear gun, ayuh.” He said it calmly, like this was common, which Nickel supposed it was in Maine.

“That’s right.”

“We can order anything you want if you got the money.”

“Anything, huh?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll take ten tommy guns,” Nickel said, and the man laughed.

“I bet you will.”

“Do they still sell those things?” Nickel said once they both got done chuckling, trying to make the question come out like an afterthought. “Or are they outlawed?”

“Well, you can’t put ’em in the window, that’s for sure. But I can still get them. You’d be surprised how many folks want one, like it’s a damn toy.”

“Somebody always wants to get ready for war,” Nickel said, passing the leather collar through his fingertips, feeling tense for the first time since his trip to the Lewiston post office. The talk of machine guns called back memories of Saratoga, and he could almost taste the tear gas. “I suppose the ammunition is easy enough to come by, though.”

“Sure. Those big drums. You gotta look them over good, though. If one of those cracks, it’s trouble, you know?”

Nickel did know, but he wasn’t about to admit it.

“I can imagine,” he said. “I’ll be back with some questions about the moose gun.”

“Anytime, pal.”

Nickel went back to the post office and dropped a note to Baltimore saying he had found good timber and asking them to tell him when they planned on heading north so he could meet them at the train station or a motel. Then he took the train back to Greenville Junction and hiked out to his camp by the lake. The next morning, the boy, Dan Hyland, was back.

“I brought my mother over, but you were gone!” he cried.

“I went into town. Why’d you bring her by to see an old graybeard like me?”

“I wanted her to see the dog,” Dan Hyland said. “Moxie loved her. I don’t think my mother is good with dogs, but even she rubbed Moxie’s belly.”

Nickel tried to imagine what this woman must have thought, seeing his canvas tent in the pines and hearing her son explain that he was training a bird dog with a strange man. It was good that he’d gone into Bangor.

“Moxie is a good judge of character,” he said. “Your mother must be a fine lady.”

That seemed to make the boy uncomfortable, so Nickel didn’t say anything more about it, and neither did Dan. They walked in the woods with the dog, and they walked in silence, and it was good to have companionship, even though neither of them said a word.

That afternoon, Moxie held her first perfect point. The kid stood as still as a deer and waited, wide-eyed, in awe of the young dog’s natural skill.

“Think there’s really a bird in there?” he whispered, so soft that Nickel could scarcely hear him. The dog’s body was perfectly still, but her snout was alive, and her eyes were bright.

“I do,” Nickel whispered back. “Let’s find out.”

Then he clapped his hands, a mighty sound in the silent woods, and a grouse flushed with a frantic beating of wings.

“She did it!” Dan Hyland cried.

“She sure did.” Nickel made like he was holding a gun, tracking the bird through the blue sky. “Bang!” he shouted. “Perfect shot—I should be a sniper.”

That made the kid laugh. A good sound. They stood together and watched the bird until it was gone, and then they made the hike back to camp, all three of them, man and boy and dog, feeling as if things were progressing well and in the right direction.

That weekend, Nickel went back to Bangor, and another letter was waiting. Brady had taken Nickel’s advice and used both a new address and a new name. The message was terse.

Coming north first week of October. Recommend a hotel.

There was a hotel not far from Dakin’s Sporting Goods on Central Avenue. Nickel scribbled the address on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, and held it in his hand for a long time before he dropped it in the box. He would need to be here to meet them. Once they were back together, he expected he’d ride off with them.

Back at his camp, he found a piece of paper and wrote a short note to the boy, Dan Hyland, asking him to take care of the dog while Nickel was away. She trusts you, he wrote, and so do I. That was true enough but still felt misleading. Nickel didn’t want the kid to be waiting for his return. Al Brady wasn’t going to tolerate a bird dog in the mix, and the setter who was such a good cover in the wilderness would be an eye-catching identifier in the city.

I’ve got work that requires travel and I won’t be able to take Moxie, he wrote. I’d be grateful if you’d keep her. If you can’t do that, try to find her a good home. We’ve worked too hard with her to just turn her loose.—Jake

It didn’t seem like enough somehow. For reasons he couldn’t explain—reasons unclear even to him—he was nearly as sad about leaving the boy as he was about leaving the dog. Perhaps it was because the kid’s shitty family had dumped him up here while they focused on their business concerns. Nickel didn’t know how to put that into words. He settled for scribbling a PS beneath his name and writing, You’re a good fisherman.

He found an envelope, put the letter and ten dollars into it, and sealed it, then said the hell with it, opened the envelope, and put in two hundred. It was risky, so much cash that if the kid didn’t keep his mouth shut, there would be questions about the gray-bearded camper, but Nickel had never been motivated by money. He found it far easier to leave dollars behind than the dog.

He handled the beautiful restored Darne shotgun and thought about leaving that for the boy too, then decided against it. It was America, and the kid would learn to shoot soon enough, but someone else could give him the weapon. Besides, unlike the money, the gun meant something to Nickel.

Strange life he’d led for someone who didn’t care about money.

That night he sat up stroking the dog’s soft fur and studying the sky. Moxie nosed at his leg with her snout, sniffing near the old bullet wound, as she often did. Amazing, how much she knew. It was cold and clear and Nickel could see more stars than he’d ever seen before, more stars than one sky seemed capable of holding. The campfire died fast beneath it, as if backing down from a challenge.

In the gray half-light ahead of dawn, he packed his guns, pinned the envelope addressed to Dan Hyland to the canvas flap of the tent, and staked the setter out on the check cord. She whined. Nickel squatted down and rubbed her ears and told her his life wasn’t safe for a dog. Besides, the kid would be down in a few hours, and he had a feeling the dog would be well cared for. Dan Hyland kept secrets, but he couldn’t hide his character. He was a kind and old soul—a good combination for a boy with a dog.

Nickel fed Moxie a last strip of bacon, accepted the lick of gratitude she planted high on his cheek, above the beard and just below his eye, and then he left her and hiked out as the sun carved a rose-colored line on the horizon, opening the vein of a new day.

By the time it was full light, he was eastbound for Bangor.

47

ALFORD

I’VE NEVER FELT bad for failing to recognize him—his gray-bearded face and outdoorsman’s garb suited a Mainer and didn’t resemble the photo on the Wanted posters—but I cannot make it through a full day without wondering what might have changed if I’d told him my real name.

Of course he couldn’t have given his. But I could’ve offered mine. What if I hadn’t used the alias I’d cooked up with my grandfather and simply told him my name was Alford? It was such an uncommon name that I suspect my father would’ve reacted to it. What would I have known then? What might have been said?

Impossible to guess.

And I assure you, impossible to put out of one’s mind.

He was Jake to me, that’s all, and when I came down to his camp in the autumn woods and found the note, I had no suspicions about him. I’d liked his company and knew how he loved the dog. It couldn’t have been easy for him to leave her behind. I put the money and the letter in my pocket and walked Moxie back up to Camp Bishopwood, which was beloved by the older boys who summered there but felt like a prison to me. During the weeks I spent with my father, one of America’s most wanted, on the shores of Moosehead Lake, I believed I was exiled, held at arm’s length from both adventure and family.

On the morning I discovered Jake had gone and left me the beautiful Llewellin setter and two hundred dollars, it was scarcely enough to claim my mind for more than a few minutes. All my thoughts were with my mother and grandfather and what I had learned on her last visit.

The FBI was closing in on the Brady Gang.

Grandfather Cody, the retired Burns detective, had shown them up. Not long after I’d been deposited at the camp near Moosehead, he intensified surveillance of the Lewiston area where the man named Jacob Winter had passed through and set up a post office box. While Winter didn’t turn up at the roller-skating rinks, dance halls, taverns, or railroad stations where Grandfather Cody and my mother searched, that first clue delivered again.

The same clerk who’d shown us the ledger with Winter’s name accepted a twenty-dollar bribe—no doubt encouraged by some low laughs and winks from my mother, I knew, having seen her best efforts at befriending the locals in the summer of searching—to inform them if Winter returned. There was an extra fifty bucks in it for him if he managed to get a fingerprint.

The clerk came through.

By the time he called the boardinghouse where Grandfather Cody and my mother were staying, Jacob Winter was gone, but he’d left an envelope that my grandfather had planted just for this task, a piece under the name Jacob Minter, close enough to justify the clerk’s confusion, he hoped. It had worked. Winter picked it up and put it down. My grandfather bagged it carefully, returned it to his room, then set off for the Lewiston train station armed with a fresh description of Jacob Winter, right down to the gray beard, green-and-black-checkered flannel shirt, and dirty denim trousers. He was sure he’d find him.

He didn’t.

Winter was gone, but he’d left his fingerprints.

That afternoon, Grandfather Cody and my mother made a difficult decision. They’d tried to go it alone all summer. Now they were close—and so was her trial. Fred Priest had managed to delay into October, but that was the best he could do. The best chance they had of persuading the prosecutor to drop the charges against my mother was by providing real evidence leading to the Brady Gang’s capture. They drove to Portland to meet an FBI agent who came north from the Boston office. The Bureau wasn’t yet operating in all states, but they’d send a man on the road with any good rumor about the Brady Gang. This agent was skeptical, at best—until he dusted the manila envelope addressed to Jacob Minter, box 217, and came up with three clear fingerprints and one thumb, all perfect matches of Edward “Nickel” Terhune.

Things began to move fast then, although I didn’t know it; I was spending my time alone in the woods or tramping along in the company of the old woodsman Jake and his bird dog.

My mother would later call that ironic. I would call it tragic, but perhaps that’s romanticizing what could have been and never was.

All I know for sure is that they were good days.

While I helped Jake teach Moxie to hold a point on a grouse, the FBI and Indiana State Police sent a task force to Lewiston. Investigators combed the city without turning up a good lead. Every post office in the state was checked, but nobody using the name Jacob Winter appeared anywhere else. Nickel Terhune had vanished—and by the end of the month, the FBI was convinced that he hadn’t stayed in Maine. They sent the Indiana team back home and reallocated their efforts to Baltimore, where reliable reports of Brady and Dalhover sightings kept coming in. The gangsters moved hotels and houses and changed cars, but they were in the company of the same women, and Toland believed the women of Baltimore were a better bet than the single clue linking Nickel Terhune and Maine. Before the feds gave up on the northern lead entirely, though, they sent out a bulletin to every car dealer and gun shop in the state.

One of those went to Dakin’s Sporting Goods at 25 Central Avenue in Bangor.

There, an employee reported that a man had been asking about tommy guns, although under questioning, he conceded that the man had seemed to be joking. Disappointed that the possible suspect had been alone, hadn’t pursued any weapons, and had fit the bill of an authentic Maine hunter, the FBI told the team at Dakin’s to call again only if there was more to report.

My mother filled me in on all this while we sat in Adirondack chairs overlooking Moosehead Lake. My enthusiasm for the updates kept me from assuming the posture of pouting that I’d planned to demonstrate. Only when it became clear that Grandfather Cody intended to leave me at the camp longer still did I remember my grievances.

“It’s not like he’s in charge anymore! If there’s anything dangerous happening, the police will deal with it. I could stay with you.”

“It’s your grandfather’s decision, Alford, and I support it.”

“Of course you do. Everyone gets to be rid of me.”

“You’re safe here,” she said. “And it won’t be for much longer. If they don’t find them in Baltimore or Maine, we’ll head back to Indiana before Halloween.”

“Who cares about Halloween,” I grumbled, thinking she was using the holiday to pacify me.

“The prosecutor who intends to seat the jury who will decide my prison sentence cares.”

That wiped the whining right out of my mouth. I stared at her.

“After all you’ve done to help, they’re still going to send you away?”

“They’re going to try. Fred Priest feels better about my defense now that we’ve contributed to the FBI’s search, but evidently it wasn’t enough to convince Agent Toland.”

She was speaking in her typical light tone, but her face was different. Wearier, the eyes unable to match the voice. She was scared.

“But… you didn’t do anything,” I said.

“That’s not entirely true.”

I pulled back, stunned, but she patted the air with a hand, telling me to relax.

“I didn’t conspire with them or set up a jailbreak, Alford, don’t worry. What I mean is that the more time I have to think and write, the more I realize that I do have some responsibility. Things I know and haven’t said. Have I committed crimes? Not directly. Have I been silent? Yes.”

She pulled out a cigarette but didn’t light it. Her eyes were on the big lake when she said, “They’ve hurt people, you know. I can’t pretend to be innocent just because I wasn’t pulling the trigger or driving the car.”

She was as somber as I’d ever seen her. Only after she’d finally lit the cigarette and taken a drag did I speak.

“You said something about writing.”

“Hmm?”

“You said the more time you have ‘to think and write.’ What did that mean?”

Her face brightened. “Look at you! You’re already a better detective than your grandfather ever was, and I’ll be sure to let him know when the time is right.” She smiled, patted my arm, and returned her attention to the lake.

“That’s not an answer,” I said.

“You’re becoming a more tenacious interrogator too.” She exhaled smoke, crossed her legs, and twisted in the Adirondack chair to face me. “May I confess in confidence?”

I nodded.

“I’m writing a book. Trying to, anyhow. It hasn’t been going as well as I’d hoped, but I never expected it to be easy.”

“A book about what? The gang?”

She made a seesawing gesture with her hand. “Yes and no. That was the money play, sure, but if I’m being totally honest, I have to admit that I want it to be much more than what people expect from me. They could sell it as the confession of a gun moll, but if they read deeply, they’d understand how much was beneath. Busted banks and hopeless men and a dusty country full of guns and anger. Self-righteous politicians telling poor people to put down their beer and get back to work. Market crashes and cross burnings right here, and still everyone says we might need to fight a war on another continent. Preachers worrying about the length of a woman’s skirt while insisting she has no right to vote for president. Oh, I thought I could get it all in, Alford, the whole damn thing. And you know what I discovered?”

I shook my head.

She smiled sadly. “It’s hard enough just to hold people’s attention. Isn’t that a bitch? You want to say so much, but even the simple sentences are tough work. And yet… I enjoy it. I really do. Even if it’s nothing more than a gun moll’s confession, it’s been a pleasure.”

“You’ve been writing a book this whole time?” I said, still not entirely sure it wasn’t one of her pranks.

“Indeed. If your grandfather had ever opened the typewriter case that I told him held my roller skates, he might’ve discovered it was an actual typewriter. But it was easy for him to believe I’d travel with roller skates, so my secret has not been hard to keep.”

I’d believed it just as easily as Grandfather Cody had.

“A book,” I said again, as if I’d never heard of one.

“Yes, a book, although I don’t think most of the publishers in New York will see it that way. There’s not enough meat on the bone. I’m trying to tell the story honestly, and that’s the trouble. I’d rather make it up. I thought if I styled it as a confession, all the things I’d tell some FBI agent like Toland if I were sentenced to death, it would help. The words have come easier, but I still don’t know how to wrap it up. I guess I’ll have a better sense of that soon enough, won’t I?” She gave a merry laugh and said, “The jury will write it for me. Is that cheating?”

I grimaced, hating that line of thought.

“Oh, don’t worry, Alford. I’ll win the day for myself yet. Then I’ll sell the book for a fortune.”

“That’s why you’re writing it?”

“I wouldn’t mind a fortune, but…” Her face fell into a sad smile and she put her cigarette out slowly. “I started writing it to impress my mother. What she loved most, you know, were great books and great writers, and I thought, What if I could surprise her? What if when I came home burdened by all the choices that had disappointed her so deeply, I could show her a book, a genuine novel, published by one of the New York houses? Lamentations of the Savannah.”

She forced a laugh, but it was unnatural, too high and giddy. Her eyes had gone bright.

“Anyhow, I missed the opportunity, didn’t I?”

I had no idea what to say. She fell silent. We sat like that for a long time, and then she shook her head as if to bring herself back to the moment.

“I know you’re miserable up here, and I promise it will be over soon.”

“It’s pretty, at least,” I said, because she felt bad enough for other things.

“It’s stunning! Have you made any friends?”

“No.” Then, seeing that was upsetting to her, I added, “Well, I met this man who’s training a bird dog. He lets me help. He’s been awfully nice, and Moxie—that’s the dog—she’s the smartest dog you’ve ever seen.”

“What’s this man’s name?”

“Jake. He lives in a tent with the dog. He taught me how to fish with a fly rod. I’m getting better.”

She smiled. “Why, I should meet this Jake and Moxie. They sound like an intrepid team.”

So I led her down the trail from Camp Bishopwood to Jake’s tent site where the creek fed the lake, but he was gone, and only the dog remained. We spent a while there, and I got Moxie to demonstrate all her best tricks, but the sun was fading in the west, and Jake was nowhere to be found. At last, my mother said she had to catch her train south.

That was the only time she was ever at the tent site by the creek.

The next time she came to Moosehead Lake, Jake was gone, the dog was mine, and the camp was closing up for the season, which meant I was back in the fold whether Grandfather Cody liked it or not. It was time to go home. His efforts at tracking the Brady Gang had failed. I could see the admission pained him—so greatly that he agreed to bring me along for one final stop.

He was curious about Bangor.

A train-station attendant there had told him about the regular appearances of a man matching the description of Jacob Winter, and a clerk at a sporting-goods store had seemed uneasy about my grandfather’s questions, telling him he should talk to the FBI or the Indiana State Police. It was the latter remark that sparked Grandfather Cody’s interest. The Indiana State Police was not an organization that should rise to mind for a gun-shop clerk in Maine.

He’d rented a room across the street from Dakin’s. His hopes were low, but I could tell he didn’t want to admit defeat just yet. Soon, though, defeat would not be a matter of debate; the Indiana courtroom loomed, with my mother’s Halloween trial date.

We would watch the sporting-goods store and see what happened. Grandfather Cody was less than delighted by the presence of an English setter on the journey to Bangor, but my mother insisted we couldn’t simply abandon the dog.

“The circus grows,” Grandfather Cody said with a sigh, then he allowed Moxie to hop into the back seat of the Lincoln. My mother took the front passenger seat, the typewriter case resting on her lap. She caught me looking at it and winked. Our secret.

The book without an ending.

48

NICKEL

AL BRADY AND JAMES DALHOVER arrived in Bangor in a Studebaker, which put Nickel in a bad frame of mind. The last Studebaker he’d been in still had his blood on the floorboards.

He remembered that day: spring heat, the doctor’s redheaded wife, the handcuffs on Nickel’s wrists. Green grass and thunderstorms. Now the grass was browning and the leaves were fire-colored and a northern wind blew without ceasing. Everything after the Fourth of July in Saratoga, Nickel thought, had been as good a stretch as he had known in a long, long time.

Bangor didn’t provide the same feeling.

Maybe it was being around the guys after so long alone—or with a dog and a boy. The men were jarring to him, brash and profane and so confident. They seemed to think three months without being arrested meant they were home free, that Hoover had forgotten about them.

What they wanted: guns.

No surprise there. Nickel hadn’t been too confused about the timber references.

He told them about Dakin’s Sporting Goods, and on October 5, they went into the store. Nickel tried to chat with the clerk as he had before, but it was different with Brady and Dalhover there, and when he introduced the two men as friends, it felt off. Both wore suits and neither sounded like a hunter. To make matters worse, Dalhover got right to the tommy-gun talk, no joking around as Nickel had done but flat-out asking if the shop could get them. The clerk, whose name was Shep, surprised Nickel, though. Rather than reminding Dalhover that such weapons were outlawed, he said that plenty of old Thompsons were still in existence in the north country, remnants of the Prohibition days, when every Canadian rumrunner wanted a machine gun.

“You can get them, then?” Al Brady demanded, coming in on the heels of the conversation, as if he just happened to be curious.

“Ayuh, maybe.”

“What about ammunition?”

“That’s the easy part.”

The men told him to obtain both and promised they’d be back in one week. That would be October 12, Columbus Day.

“Maybe there will be another parade,” Dalhover said, winking at Nickel, as if everything in Saratoga Springs had been a lark. Sometimes when Nickel coughed in the morning after a night of sleep, he could taste the gas from the safe.

Dakin’s agreed to order the weapons and ammunition, Brady and Dalhover each bought pistols and bullets, and then the gang left town and drove south to Connecticut. Dalhover was at the wheel and Nickel was in the back seat again. That wasn’t the way it should have been, but Nickel had been gone a long time and Brady and Dalhover were forming new habits. Nickel had liked it better when they were leaving Saratoga, even despite the sirens and the tears in his eyes, because the steering wheel had been in his hands. The back seat reminded him of Lima.

Brady and Dalhover had holed up in an apartment in Bridgeport, Connecticut, having felt the squeeze in Baltimore; an FBI agent had talked to one of the girls, and she’d told Brady about it, at which point Brady and Dalhover started north with twin goals: Get out of sight, and pick up Nickel. Well, Nickel and the guns.

Once they were in Bridgeport, Brady told Nickel to shave off his beard.

“You blended in with the fuckin’ lumberjacks, and that’s fine, but down here in civilization, it’s a shitty disguise.”

Better than no disguise at all, Nickel thought, but he went to a barber. It was strange, watching his Mainer identity fall away snip by snip, Jake the fishing guide dropping to the floor to be swept up and discarded, Nickel Terhune appearing in his place.

He felt exposed, the mirror working on him like a confessional. Walking down the street after, he was convinced every passerby recognized him, thought this must be what it was like to be famous, like Gary Cooper or Lou Gehrig, and wondered how they didn’t go insane just from feeling like every set of eyes knew them. Probably helped when you thought the watchers were also admirers. He wasn’t certain about that, though. The freedom of being a nobody was underrated.

They were staying at a hot-sheet hotel near the harbor, the kind of place merchant mariners frequented on shore leave. All the money from the bank robbery Nickel had saved, Brady and Dalhover had spent. Clarence Shaffer showed up on October 10, the first time the whole gang had been reunited since they’d split after Saratoga. He immediately grumbled that he was low on cash.

“We’re gonna fix that,” Brady assured him. “First, we need the tools. Nickel found a shop up in Maine that’ll sell us some Thompsons.”

Buying machine guns from a sporting-goods store, no matter how cooperative—or crooked—the owner might be, was different than buying broken pieces off the hoods in Pigtown and fixing them up. The more formal the transaction, the greater the risk, and still the other three accepted that it was worth doing on account of the Thompsons. Once, they’d robbed banks with pistols. Robbed more than a hundred of them that way, in fact. There was something addictive about superior firepower. Once you’d had it, it seemed you couldn’t live without it.

Before they went north, Nickel stole another car. The others were comfortable with the Studebaker, but he said it was a bad-luck ride, reminded him too much of the Lima shooting, and they taunted him about being superstitious but let him hot-wire a Lincoln in Bridgeport. Only after he’d stolen it did he realize the car had Ohio plates, as if to neutralize his efforts at changing his luck.

They left on Sunday. Dalhover drove the old Lincoln, bitching about it being inferior to the car they’d had. Nickel sat silently in the back seat, rubbing his clean jaw with his hand, his skin like a stranger’s. Traffic was slow, the holiday bringing out the last of the vacationers, lots of Massachusetts plates. Dalhover cursed them all, said Massachusetts drivers were the worst in the country, but Brady wouldn’t let him lean on the horn, reminding him that the less they were noticed, the better. Shaffer got worried that the sporting-goods store wouldn’t be open on account of the holiday, so they stopped in Saco, not far across the state line, and Dalhover called Dakin’s and confirmed that the shop would be open on Tuesday.

They crawled north with the tourists, people stopping cars to look at the leaves or unpack picnic baskets or make abrupt turns into lobster shacks. The pace of it was wearing on Dalhover and Brady, so they stopped in a seaside town on Route 1 called Camden and had a couple beers to cool their tempers. It was a gorgeous spot, mountains jammed right up against the sea, islands visible in the harbor beyond, sailboats heeling hard, a lighthouse standing sentry. Nickel looked from the mountains to the harbor and back and his gaze fixed on a two-story brick building flanked by steep alleys leading down to the waterfront. It was the closest match he’d ever seen to the bar he’d sketched on his cell wall back in Hancock County.

Camden.

That’s where he’d build it, he decided. Nickel Terhune’s Second-Act Saloon. He’d come back with a bag of cash and spend the winter, get to know the locals here, then make his pitch. Buy out the old bastard who owned the place and then move from one side of the bar to the other, smooth as Shoeless Joe Jackson stealing second base.

Sure—it would go just like that.

He paid the tab and told the others they needed to get back on the road because the days got dark early on the Maine coast.

He wasn’t wrong. It was dark by the time they reached the outskirts of Bangor. They parked the car at a rest stop in a nowhere burg named Carmel, paid for a week as if they were in no hurry, then called a taxi and went into the city. There they found a hotel near the Kenduskeag Stream. Dalhover, Shaffer, and Brady cracked open a bottle of rye and started a card game. Nickel said he wanted to smoke a cigarette and take a walk.

The stream was more canal than creek, its course shaped by steep stone walls as it funneled down to the Penobscot River, and it was choked with garbage, the stink of it closer to gasoline than water. Disgusted, he walked upstream and was pleasantly surprised to discover that here, above the stone channels that had been created to guide the water, it was cleaner. He kept walking. Once he got past a set of old trolley tracks, the water’s shackles loosened, the concrete confines giving way to natural banks, moonlight glimmering on the surface. This reminded him of his camp at Moosehead, so he left the sidewalk and stepped onto the grass, the earth hardened with early fall frost. The smoke from a hobo’s campfire tinged the air. The farther he walked, the stiller the water became, until he could imagine it as a mill pond.

He stayed out until he had no more cigarettes, nothing left but matches and empty pockets. Then he went back to the hotel.

“Where the hell you been?” Brady said. “Shit, you were gone an hour, maybe more.”

“Just walking. Gimme that rye.”

He drank the whiskey, trying without success to hold the memory of the moonlit water in his mind and listening to Brady plan the next big job at a place called the Merrill Trust Company, which he claimed had five million in deposits. Nickel felt suffocated by the conversation, though, so much talk in such a small room, and he went to bed and put his hat over his face and tried to remember the tent by Moosehead, the dog named Moxie curled at his side, the sounds of water and the cries of loons.

That didn’t work, so he drank more whiskey.

At dawn, they called a taxi, returned to the auto park, and retrieved the Lincoln with the Ohio tags. It was a bright cold morning and Brady was feeling fine, promising they’d be back in Bridgeport by sundown with enough firepower for the Merrill Trust job.

There were more than thirty guns in the trunk of the Lincoln.

Not enough, evidently.

Dakin’s Sporting Goods wasn’t open yet, so they found a diner and ate breakfast. Brady sent Nickel to do a walkabout, see if there was anyone suspicious keeping watch outside the gun shop. Nickel hadn’t spent enough time in Bangor to know who or what would be suspicious, but he agreed. He walked down to Central Street, past the store, and found the one place that was already open and had a view. It was a small bookshop with a friendly clerk. Nickel pretended to browse books while he studied the quiet street. Everything looked as it should, and there was plenty of parking right out front. If the store clerk had the machine guns and the ammo ready, it would be a five-minute transaction. If he didn’t, it would be an easy getaway.

The juvenile section filled the bookcases in front of the window, and as Nickel headed for the door, he saw a book cover that stopped him: an illustration of a man in a ball cap reading a newspaper with a headline that blared “G-Men Win Again!” That was what had caught his eye, but then he glanced at the title.

Dan Hyland, Police Reporter.

He tried to smile but couldn’t. Of course the kid had been lying about his name. The boy was too guarded, too secretive. Nickel was fed a line of bullshit by a kid who liked pulp novels, and Nickel bought it because he’d been too busy working on his own bullshit story to pay attention. It was funny, really. A couple of liars meeting up in the woods. He thought of Moxie, the way she put her paws high on the boy’s chest and exposed her belly to him without hesitation, and then the grin he hadn’t been able to summon appeared.

What mattered was how the kid had treated the dog. Nickel Terhune had seen a lot of life and more than his share of courtrooms and he didn’t think there was a clearer verdict of character than how a person treated a dog.

He bought the book and walked back to the diner.

“Stop by the library?” Brady asked when Nickel slid into the booth.

“Looked like a good one,” Nickel said, and he showed them the cover, that “G-Men Win Again!” headline, and they all had a laugh.

It was eight o’clock now, and Dakin’s Sporting Goods was open. They paid the check and walked out into the Maine morning.

The city was sleepy. Made sense, it being a holiday, which kept the streets clear. Brady took the wheel this time, drove the Lincoln back across the Kenduskeag, and parked in front of the store. No one had said a word since the diner. Now Brady said, “Too quiet.”

“It’s a holiday,” Dalhover replied, putting Nickel’s thought into words.

“Still.”

They all looked around, engine idling, escape easy to make if they needed to do it.

“You’re getting soft,” Shaffer said. “Like Nickel, afraid of the Studebaker because it was bad luck.”

“You’ll get your nose busted, say that again,” Brady snapped. “Just go in and buy the guns.”

“What’ll you be doing?”

“Sitting here with my gun in my hand in case you need help. You want to sit here, fine. I’m just saying someone stays with the car.”

“You stay,” Nickel said. “The rest of us will go. It’s too much for one guy to carry out. Besides, they know me.”

“All right.”

Nickel was so distracted by making sure his jacket hid his pistol that he was out of the car before he realized the pulp novel was still in his hand. Stupid. He set it on the trunk, knowing they’d come back with armloads of wrapped weapons, and he’d throw the book in the trunk with the guns then.

They crossed the street and went into the store.

Everything was right until it was wrong.

Same window displays, same arrays of fishing tackle and snowshoes and boots and shotguns. Same clerk behind the register.

Two new employees, though. Nickel had been through the shop enough to know the clerks. The only familiar face was the clerk named Shep. The two new men, one arranging creels on a shelf at the back of the store, the other adjusting the blinds in a side window near the front, were too old to be stock boys. Nickel paused just inside the door, assessing, but Dalhover and Shaffer went straight for the counter. Shep looked past them at Nickel. Forced a smile.

“Lost the beard.”

“Yeah.” Nickel was staring at the new man in the back of the store. He’d picked up the same creel he’d just set down. The other one, standing to Nickel’s right, was twisting the rod that adjusted the blinds as if it were broken, but it wasn’t. It filtered the light in and out, in and out.

Like a signal.

Nickel felt time slow down to a single sweat drop on the back of his neck. He was still looking at the man at the window, wanting him to turn so he could see his face, when the clerk spoke again.

“You ever get that old shotgun fixed up?”

“Huh?”

“A Darne, wasn’t it? That old French piece you told me about.”

“No,” Nickel said. “I never did.” Why lie about it? Why not.

“Shame. That could be a beauty.”

“It was once,” Nickel said, and then the man at the window blinds finally turned to look at him, and the bead of sweat slid from Nickel’s neck to his spine, and he knew. Like an impending fish strike.

The fake clerk from the rear of the store came over, drew a gun, and jammed it into Shaffer’s back.

“Drop your weapon!” he shouted. Nickel hadn’t even seen Shaffer draw his piece because he’d been busy looking at the man by the window working the blinds, watching that daylight flicker and die, flicker and die.

Shaffer didn’t drop his weapon. He tried to spin and attack the cop even though he had a gun to his back, which might have been a brave thing to do if it hadn’t been so dumb. The first shots ripped through him, and then it got loud fast, someone else shooting from outside, blowing out the window and littering the floor with glass. Nickel had his gun in his hand, and then he didn’t. He was standing, and then he wasn’t.

No idea what direction the bullets came from. There were shouts mixed with the shots now, a cacophony, and there was blood hot in the hand that had once held the gun.

Still alive, though. He was still alive.

Lima all over again, he thought. Just make it to the car, only this time, don’t take the back seat, not even if you’re shot. If you have the wheel, it’ll all work out. Don’t ride along—drive.

He pushed through the door while Dalhover screamed, “A fucking trap!” like this was a new discovery, and more guns roared than seemed possible. Big rifles booming, pistols snapping like snare drums, but nobody had a machine gun going yet. That was the equalizer—the Thompson. Spray this fucking town down and then it would be like Lima and Saratoga and all the others, a story that kept on being told, hostages and handcuffs, juries and jailbreaks; the road never ended, it only curved.

It was the old trolley track that brought him down. Out of commission now but still embedded in the pavement, a relic, useless but present—and dangerous. The lip of steel caught his toe and he fell onto the brick-lined street. Bullets hit him high, hit him low. The Lincoln shivered and stuttered from impacts, the car fifteen impossible feet away, the driver’s door open, Al Brady gone.

Son of a bitch made it out again, Nickel thought. That was good. Al would come back for Nickel, same as he had before. Even a closed cell door didn’t matter if one of them was still on the outside. They’d figure it out. Always had.

Then he turned and saw that he was facing Al Brady’s corpse.

Brady was stretched out on his back in the middle of the street, shot damn near in half, blood on the bricks, a Ballantine Ale billboard above him.

The Lincoln sat empty, thirty guns in the trunk, a kid’s book still resting on the lid:

“G-Men Win Again!”

Nickel’s vision blurred, the Ballantine billboard swam, and he blinked and turned his head, trying to focus. Police were running toward him, a dozen, maybe more, pouring out of alleys and doorways, some in uniform and some in plain clothes and everyone holding a different flavor of firearm. He reached for his own pistol but couldn’t make his hand work properly. He rolled onto his shoulder, and now he was looking up at the building across the street, and there were two impossible faces in the window.

Savannah Cody and the kid who’d called himself Dan Hyland.

This is what dying feels like, he thought. You saw people from the past. He’d heard that was true but never believed it. He was glad his mind had summoned those two, though, such an unlikely pairing, the love of his life and a lonely boy from Maine. While he stared at the impossible vision, Savannah put her hand up to her mouth, and he knew what she was doing—had seen it from the hayloft on a hundred hazy summer nights.

She was blowing him a goodbye kiss. Last thing she always did before he went on down the road alone to make the long walk home, happy under the stars, the smell of her still on him. He always blew the first one, though. That was his job, to start the goodbye. Hers was to finish it.

Boot heels clattered on the bricks. The police were yelling at him to Stay down, stay down, you bastard, stay down!

Staying down would be the easy thing, but Nickel wanted to blow a kiss to his girl. He pushed off the bricks and made it to his knees and lifted his bloody hand toward his lips.

When the farewell kiss came, it was from a .45-caliber, and Nickel Terhune never saw the shooter.

49

ALFORD

WE HAD NO IDEA they’d arrived in Bangor until bullets broke glass.

Up to that point, all we’d been told was that we were to stay inside and out of sight. The FBI was working with Grandfather Cody following his tip on Jacob Winter in Lewiston, but only grudgingly. Grandfather Cody spotted the outsiders as they amassed, though—outsiders including an agent who later competed in the Olympics as a sharpshooter—and I think he understood that the FBI was ready to end the road for the Brady Gang in Bangor.

I know my mother did when she proposed to spend the day on a bench on the street by the canal, where she would be visible to anyone headed to Dakin’s Sporting Goods. “He’ll come to see me,” she insisted. “If he does, that separates him from the others.”

“You’ve come too far as a mother to suggest such a plan, Savannah,” my grandfather said.

I didn’t know who I wanted to win the debate. I didn’t want her to leave, but there was a look to her I’d never seen before: fear. Not for herself—she wanted to be down on the street, after all—but for my father. The sharpshooters were waiting in the windows, the undercover agents were in the store, and she wanted, however futilely, to offer him an exit ramp.

They were still hashing it out when the first shot cracked Dakin’s display window.

The volleys that followed seemed more appropriate for a battlefield than an arrest, and I couldn’t see what was happening because I was down on the floor, tackled by the woman who only seconds earlier had been arguing that she needed to be on the street. She moved before Grandfather Cody did, hitting me hard and driving me down and out of sight, and then I was on my back, and all I could see through the window was blue sky and a Ballantine billboard.

It was much like the view my father had, though I didn’t know that then.

My mother stayed on top of me as the bullets blasted away, hundreds of them, enough to take down a battalion of gangsters. At last, there was a lull in the shooting. Shouts rose from the street, men yelling at someone to stay down. My mother rose.

“Don’t get up, Alford,” she said, then she went to the window.

I ignored her and followed. My grandfather reached for my arm, but I slipped his grip and rushed ahead and so I was at her side when the man the world knew as Nickel rose to his knees from the bricks.

He was too far away for me to recognize him, and he’d shaved the beard, so I wouldn’t have thought of Jake from the campsite by the creek. I might have confused him for Brady or Dalhover or Shaffer if not for one clear identifier: my mother’s scream.

When he fell, she whirled from the window and ran for the door.

Grandfather Cody tried to stop her, but he was a step slow. Me, he caught successfully, grabbing me around the waist and lifting me away from the door as she opened it and ran out. He bellowed her name, but she did not stop, and while I could feel his frantic desire to pursue her thrumming in his muscles like an electric current, he stayed planted and held tight to me. The shooting had stopped and we returned to the window together in a silence I will never forget.

There are sounds that stay with you for a lifetime, and for me three of them came clustered in those awful moments of a beautiful October morning: the relentless gunfire, my mother’s scream, and the trapped silence between the shooting and the sirens.

There were lawmen all around my father, federal agents and local police and Indiana state troopers, and yet they parted for her. I had seen the world move in mysterious ways for Savannah Cody before, and it happened again, policemen stepping out of her way as she ran across the bricks and through the blood. Only when she was kneeling over the body, both of her hands holding tightly to one of his, did an FBI agent finally react.

It took three of them to pull her away.

Then we could see the corpse clearly, stretched out on the street.

“Which one of them is it?” I asked. Even though I thought I knew.

“Dalhover, I think,” Grandfather Cody said, but of course it was not. “Come on. We’ve got to go get her.”

We were heading down the stairs when she started up them. She was weaving like a drunk, all her grace gone, her eyes glassy.

“Savannah,” Grandfather Cody said; that was all, just her name, and she looked like a girl when she fell into his arms and put her face to his chest and howled.

He held her up, then eased her down, and they sat together on the dusty stairs while she sobbed, and the sirens started. I sat down beside them. I put out my hand. She took it, her palm damp with tears.

That’s how the Cody family was found by Agent Toland of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—and when my grandfather told him to get out, he went.

It was a long time before we walked out to the street, and when we did, my mother was between us, one hand on my grandfather’s arm, the other clutching my hand, and her eyes were dry.

50

FROM THE CONFESSIONS OF SAVANNAH CODY

Agent Toland: What was your role on the day we brought the bastards down?

I should have been on the street. If I had been, he’d be alive today.

Toland: Explain that.

We knew they might be coming. The FBI had told Dad that much, and I told Dad that I wanted to be on the street. I wanted to be visible to Eddie when they arrived.

Toland: Why?

Because I knew he’d come toward me if he saw me. He always did, couldn’t help himself; even if I was poison for him, he’d come back for another bite.

There’s a canal just down the street from where he died. A good place to watch the water. I’d ridden with him long enough to know two things for sure: He’d check in all directions before he committed to going inside, and his eyes would linger on the water.

When they did, they’d find me, standing there on the corner above the canal. He would come my way then, no matter what. I was sure of it at the time, and I’m sure of it today. If I’d been standing on the street, he’d have walked my way once more, and I could’ve talked him into surrendering.

You bastards didn’t have any intention of talking, though. You wanted to kill.

Toland: We’d have negotiated if they hadn’t turned into mad dogs, as you’ve called them, as soon as they walked into that shop.

Bullshit. That wasn’t ever supposed to be an arrest. It was a trap. I’m supposed to believe the sniper had been brought in for his negotiating skills?

Toland: Well, then, why weren’t you there? Why weren’t you standing by the canal where his eyes would have found yours in this sweet little story?

Because I’m a coward. That’s how I see it. Dad says it’s because I’d become a mother. He says I blame myself now only because it all went the way that it did, and if I could remember the morning clearly, I would recall that I agreed with him that I needed to be with Alford, not outside where a stray bullet could find me, even way down the hill from the store.

Maybe he’s right. He surely is about my inability to recall it clearly. Who can be clear about the way a heart breaks? You only remember that it did and tell yourself a story about how that came to pass.

Like I’m doing now. Like I have been all this time. Working through the story of a heartbreak.

Toland: They were bad men. You know it.

They were criminals, yes. Some of them were killers, yes.

Toland: And Nickel Terhune was one of them. From start to finish, he was one of them.

I’ll never agree with you on that. Never. I wish you were real so I could tell you that. Some days, I wish the electric chair really was waiting on me. I wish I’d never started this silly book. The reader I wanted it to have is dead, and all the goals I had for it are selfish. I wanted to impress people. With my sad little story, I wanted to impress the world. But mostly, I wanted to write the ending, because I never got to do that with my mother. With Eddie… I was supposed to be able to do that. Because he was so good with the wheel in his hands and four fine tires on the road and the map in his mind.

He always knew where he was going.

The moment when he looked up at me and blew the kiss? He knew where he was going then too. He could’ve stayed down. But he saw that map; I promise you, he did. He saw the road that led right to the electric chair that’s waiting on Dalhover now—the road that could’ve been waiting on me if I’d gotten in the wrong car on the wrong day and stayed in it.

I got out. At the Willard Hotel in Franklin, Indiana, I got out, and Eddie went his way, and I went mine. What if I hadn’t, though? There’d be a bullet or a hot burst of high voltage waiting on me then. Those are the options.

He had so many different chances to get out of the wrong cars. I hate him for never doing it, and yet I love him for his loyalty. The people who gave him opportunities weren’t worthy of loyalty, that was the trouble, and the ones who might have been refused to accept him.

Me? Where do I fit in all that? I’m somewhere in the middle.

I’ll always be somewhere in the middle. I can’t write the ending. It’s better for me now than it might’ve been—I have my life, I have my son, I have my father. I’m back at the farm where I had my best days. I get a second chance.

But I don’t have Eddie Terhune, a hayloft on a humid night, or silk sheets in a Chicago hotel. Memories don’t do what you want them to. They don’t behave, don’t come along with a comforting hand on a night when you’ve got tears in your eyes. They move at their own pace, choose their own arrival.

In that way, they remind me of Eddie. Always showing up when I’m unprepared.

I’d like you to ask me a question about my son. I can’t make you talk anymore, though. You faded out like a radio signal on a drive that went a few miles too far. The fun of it is gone now, all the possibility bled out of the pages, because now there is an ending. I guess this is what it feels like to let a story go. I could hate you, tease you, believe in our back-and-forth. I could make villains and heroes, then breathe hope into it all. Most of it was true, or at least true to my memories, but the ending was supposed to be the best part. Redemption, salvation, call it what you want. I needed to end it the right way: with my guilt and Eddie’s escape.

It was a confession, after all.

Truth is, I don’t have much more to confess than childish choices and the love of a lost man. Who wants to bring charges against a lady like that when all the gangsters are dead? They don’t want to prosecute me now; they want to pity me.

Then forget me.

We’ll all be forgotten, even Al Brady, the mad dog himself, public enemy number one. They’re still talking about Dillinger, making movies and publishing books, his name on people’s lips after all this time, but it’s been a long while since I heard Al’s name. He did his best to die famous, and the only clear reminders of him now are some bricks with bullet nicks in Bangor, Maine.

Eddie, they never even knew well enough to forget. He died in the street of a strange city a thousand miles from home, and his son watched it happen, and Eddie never even knew they’d met. I’m grateful that they did. That’s the romantic part of the story, the part I tried to sell you on when I could still make you real, when I could hit the typewriter keys and make you fight with me.

It means something to Alford that they did meet, and it will mean more to him in years to come, I suspect, but Eddie never got that realization. I don’t believe in ghosts. He’s not watching over anyone’s shoulder. I like to dream that he saw Alford in the window and figured it all out in that last second, right when he put his hand to his lips.

It’s hard for me to do that, but I try.

I try.

51

ALFORD

IT WAS A full day after the shootout before I saw a photograph of a gray-bearded man in a green-and-black-plaid shirt and learned that Nickel Terhune was also the man from Moosehead Lake who’d left me two hundred dollars and a dog.

Nobody believed me at first. Why would they? I’ve had decades to consider that, and I’ve learned that even quotidian coincidence breeds skepticism. My meeting with my father appears to be a grand coincidence, even when you consider his love of the lake, that spot on the map that had eluded him for so long. In the years that followed, I stopped courting the idea of coincidence and decided that I believed in my mother’s idea: fate.

You can laugh at that if you like. Tell me the world is full of sliding doors and strange timing, flukes and serendipity. Tell me my mother really did plot with him, and they arranged it all so I might know the man, and if he hadn’t been shot dead, we’d have reunited somewhere down the road. I don’t believe any of those options. I’ve spent too many hours studying the old maps and marveling over our routes from spring to autumn 1937, thinking of all the ways in which it shouldn’t have been possible—and yet it happened.

I also know that if she’d been aware of his camp, she would’ve lingered long enough to see him once more. I’m sure of that.

James Dalhover died in the electric chair in Michigan City. I’m glad my father rode out on a bullet instead of high-voltage current, but it is hard not to wonder what a single visit to see him in prison would’ve been like. To see him and know who he was and for him to know me. What might have been said?

I’ll never know, but that’s fine. Learning comes from asking questions, not giving answers.

There has been plenty written and said about my father and the men he traveled with, and most of it isn’t wrong, but I can add this: He taught me how to use a fly rod and refused to let me handle a gun and he was always kind to the dog.

These things erase no sins, but they do matter. It is worth wondering how things might have gone differently for him. As my ancestor wrote long before I took my first breath: “Show me a man without doubt and I shall show you a corpse.” For me it is impossible not to wonder what a conversation with my father might have been like, but then I realize what it couldn’t have been like: our time at the campsite near Moosehead Lake where a creek whispered beneath the pines and a kind man taught me how to handle a rod and train a dog.

Maybe it’s for the best that I never sat with him in Michigan City.

As for the Cody family?

We went home.

Westward in autumn was different than eastbound in summer. The days got longer with each state line that fell behind us, the western daylight at war with the season, and the car was quiet. I had a partner in the back seat now, Moxie, and the country through which we passed was no longer new to me, just different than it had been on the journey out.

It took less than a week for the story to fade from the front pages. It was over, after all. Dalhover’s trial and execution were all that remained. With three men dead and Dalhover’s testimony to assure the FBI that my mother had nothing to do with the jailbreak, J. Edgar Hoover had no appetite for prosecuting Savannah Cody. He had the corpses he desired and one live man left for the electric chair. That was enough.

James Dalhover’s execution marked the effective end of the gangster era in America.

The G-men had won indeed.

Al Brady was buried in an unmarked grave in Bangor. Clarence Shaffer’s family brought him back to Indiana. We did the same for my father after the Terhunes refused to do it. My grandfather paid the bill.

“Mom wouldn’t like that,” my mother said.

“She might have surprised you if given the time,” he answered, eyes on the checkbook. “You certainly would have surprised her.”

My mother started to speak, stopped, and then they sat in silence. My grandfather tore the check free from the book and sent it off to the mortician in Maine who’d embalmed my father’s bullet-riddled corpse.

For a while, we were infamous. That quieted fast. By the time I went into the army, after Pearl Harbor was bombed, most Americans didn’t recognize the name Terhune. When I returned to college after the war, I discovered that the Reverend General’s iconic novel Lamentations of the Shenandoah was not in the university’s library system. Everything is temporary, even fame and infamy. Most stories don’t last. Many of the great ones are never even shared.

My mother’s was one of those, I think. She kept the manuscript locked up until she died, which meant my first reading of “The Confessions of Savannah Cody” came in September of 1982.

Nobody remembered Nickel Terhune by then.

There was a moment leading up to the execution of James Dalhover in 1938 when I suspect my mother could’ve published her “confession” to brisk sales. With the right publicity campaign, her book might have been a bestseller. There was just one problem: The woman who’d once proposed to a bank robber while he was in jail no longer spoke to the press.

Later, she became the press. She wrote guest columns for the local paper, stories of farm life in southern Indiana. People rolled their eyes over those until they realized how much they enjoyed them. By 1950, she was a nationally syndicated columnist, her work printed in more than two hundred fifty newspapers. By 1960, after I passed the Indiana bar and began working as a public defender—a career inspired as much by Douglass Prescott as Nickel Terhune—Savannah Cody had a wide American readership who believed she’d rarely left the farm of her birth. The nation knew her name, and they knew the wit and wisdom of Wendell Cody, recited so often in her columns, his character rendered as a comedic foil to her supposed practicality. Grandfather Cody pretended to hate his appearances in her columns, but in truth he loved the role. She shared plenty about his past and little of her own.

She never published a single word about the man she always called Eddie.

I don’t know what she would have thought of my efforts here. I like to imagine her reading these pages with that half smile and an occasional delighted laugh and, maybe, just maybe, wiping a tear from her eye. It is my story, yes, but I was a passenger in my own life that year. It has taken me a long time to realize that this is true of everyone and every year, whether we want to believe it or not.

Edward “Nickel” Terhune is buried on a bluff beside the mill pond on our farm, looking southwest across the Ohio River. The stone cross bears no name, but it faces his own awful childhood home, looking down on it from higher ground.

Every year on the day of his death, my mother and I sat at the graveside. That was the one day we always spoke about him. Neither of us pretended that he had been a pure man, just a tragic one. But on that day, she would tell stories about him that made her smile, and I suppose there are worse legacies than that.

I know there are.

I have never gone back to Bangor, although it is the one place in the world where the Brady Gang is remembered. Few in their home state know of them now—Hoosiers have Dillinger to mythologize—but nothing like the Brady Gang had ever hit Maine before, so Maine remembers them. I understand there were tours and once even a reenactment of the big shootout in the street. Every now and then, some historian reaches out to me, eager for an interview. I’ve passed on those opportunities. I respect their right to tell the story, but when it comes to my version of it, I want no editors, let alone photographs of shot-up Bangor bricks. I have no desire to return to that scene.

I have gone back to Moosehead Lake.

There is a campsite there, where a creek meets a lake and woodsmoke chases the stars and a good dog stays quiet when the loons call, that is worth the trip. It is the kind of place where memories ride hard at midnight, the most important questions remain unanswered, and a free man can come and go, haunted but hopeful.

Call it a hideout or call it a dream. I wish you all one spot like it in your lifetime. That one is mine—and once, it was ours.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE USUAL SUSPECTS were joined by some new accomplices on this one. Much gratitude to the Little, Brown and Company team: Sally Kim, Helen O’Hare, Liv Ryan, Sabrina Callahan, Lauren Roberts, Kathleen Quinlan, Karen Landry, Tracy Roe, and Josh Kendall. It’s a privilege to work with such impassioned, enthusiastic, and talented people.

I’ve got the best agent in the business, Richard Pine, who is aided by his talented InkWell Management colleagues. Gideon Pine always provides sharp early reads, along with appreciated Indiana University sports commentary. Angela Cheng Caplan and Allison Binder are wonderful advocates in the TV and film world. Erin Mitchell makes it seem as if I’m organized. This is powerful magic.

Stephen King provided a generous early read and tremendous support, and always inspires. I’m also grateful for the early thoughts from Michael Pietsch.

This book wouldn’t exist if not for the remarkable resources of libraries and local news. Please do what you can to support these irreplaceable institutions.

Thanks to my parents for taking me to the John Dillinger Museum many years ago—and to the library on so many occasions. Lasting impacts!

Thanks, as always, to my wife and our friends for tolerating me along the way.

This is the first book I’ve published without my dear friend Bob Hammel’s red pen marking up the pages, but his lessons linger, as does my gratitude.

To the booksellers, librarians, and readers who allow me to have this career, my eternal thanks, and to everyone I’ve forgotten, my sincere apologies.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

MICHAEL KORYTA is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty novels. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and adapted into major motion pictures, and he has won numerous awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A former private investigator and journalist, he lives in Bloomington, Indiana, and Camden, Maine.

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“A new Koryta is an automatic must-read.” —Lee Child

“Koryta is an exceptionally gifted storyteller. Every scene sparkles, from the superlative action scenes to the intimate human threads woven throughout. Take my advice: Turn these pages. They will not disappoint.” —David Baldacci

“Cool and cunning… Koryta is such a skilled writer—the story feels like the real deal.” —New York Times Book Review

Books, ebooks, and audiobooks by Michael Koryta are available at your favorite bookseller. For more information, visit MichaelKoryta.com.

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BY MICHAEL KORYTA

An Honest Man

Never Far Away

If She Wakes

How It Happened

Rise the Dark

Last Words

Those Who Wish Me Dead

The Prophet

The Ridge

The Cypress House

So Cold the River

The Silent Hour

Envy the Night

A Welcome Grave

Sorrow’s Anthem

Tonight I Said Goodbye