Dillinger's Got Nothing On Us: The Short Life and Interesting Times of the Jay Gang (3/5)
J2 RPS AU
PG-13
Part 3 of 5
Master post
Art
Summer 1933
Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas
One quick job before we disappear, Chris said. We're leaving the state anyway, he said. You can drive, he said.
This will go badly, is what he should have said. And We'll be chased into Indiana. And We might be wanted in Missouri now.
The best Jensen can say about this particular enterprise is that at least they had the foresight to hit a bank in a city besides St Louis, where people might have recognized them.
"It's not my fault this time!" Chad insists, as they speed over the state line into Illinois, escaping the Cape Girardeau police just in time to catch a couple of Illinois cops on motorcycles. "The teller refused me! This is why I need a loaded gun!"
"You would've shot him," Jared says. "Then it'd be San Antonio all over again."
"Well it doesn't matter now," Jensen grits through his teeth. Having motorcycle cops on his ass makes him incredibly nervous - they can flank him and he has no idea how fast this car can go. "We still have company. Why am I driving? I'm not the speed demon."
"We can't stop. Pull off up there." Jared points to a road running off the highway a little ahead of them. He jumped in the front seat next to Jensen when they came tearing out of the bank, and just having him there makes Jensen feel a little calmer. Still nervous about outrunning cops in a state he doesn't know, but the next best thing to sitting next to Chris.
A couple more hours of driving at top speed over an assortment of paved highways, country roads, and dirt tracks takes its toll on an already overextended engine, and Jensen has to pull over when smoke starts leaking out from under the hood. At least the engine waits until he's off the road to cough, belch, and quit entirely.
"Well, shit," he says.
"Ok, that might be my fault," Chad admits. "We never tested the engine like that."
"It did pretty well," Jared says, opening his door and climbing out of the car. "We couldn't use it to advertise our own garage, but we coaxed a little more juice out of it." He tries to wave the smoke away as he walks around the front of the Ford and over to the driver's side. Jensen rolls down the window.
"So what now, Mr Grease Monkey?" he asks. Jared shrugs.
"I guess we walk."
"Walk where?" Chad demands, at the same time Chris says "Oh hell no." He gets out of the car, followed shortly by Chad.
"What do you think we did to it?" Jared asks Chad. "Could we do it again and make it better?"
"I thought we were making it faster." Chad walks around the car and tentatively pats the hood.
"It was faster," Jensen says, "until it died on us." He's going to believe Jared's assessment that all of his and Chad's tinkering actually boosted the Ford's speed.
"Can we maybe discuss doing something besides standing around here with our dicks in our hands?" Chris interrupts. Jensen takes that as his cue to get out of the car.
They debate their options, which boil down to two, really - wait for someone to drive by and offer them a ride, or start walking. At least the car chose to give up the ghost on a decent-sized road, so they're not stranded on some old wagon track in the middle of nowhere and there's a chance someone will appear before dark to rescue them.
There is the matter of the two sacks full of other people's money, not to mention the several firearms in the front and back seats of the car. All their luggage is tied to the back, as well as Chris' guitar and a camera that Jared bought Jensen for his birthday, which is full of pictures of the four of them goofing off and (in Chad's case) sitting on the floor surrounded by stolen cash. They're at least a state removed from the bank in Cape Girardeau, and as far as they know no one's looking for them here, but still, they don't want to take any chances, and whatever they decide, they have to be careful.
After about fifteen minutes, while the four of them are still discussing their options and trying to figure out where they are, a red four-door Chevrolet pulls up alongside them and a man in a straw boater leans out of the driver's-side window to ask if they need some help.
"You have a spare engine?" Jared asks.
"No, just the one we're using," the man says.
"Can we borrow it?" Chad asks. He sounds like he's kidding, but as the driver of the Chevrolet laughs and starts to answer, Chad reaches into the back seat of the old Ford, grabs a shotgun, and aims it at the man in the boater. "I'm serious. Get out of the car."
"Oh, Jesus," Chris mutters.
"We can't take their car!" Jared protests.
"Why not?" Chad says. "You stole one out of someone's driveway."
"I tried to return it."
"Chad - " Jensen starts to say. This is a stupid conversation, for one thing, and the longer they stand around arguing, the greater their chances of getting into trouble.
More trouble, anyway.
"Get our stuff," Chad says. The driver of the car has hustled himself out and is now standing in the road looking a little nervous but mostly confused. "You too," Chad tells the other person in the car, using the shotgun for emphasis. "We needed a car. I got us a car." He peers over the top of the Chevrolet. The car's passenger turns out to be a blonde woman in a melon-colored dress. She also looks a little confused but not particularly nervous.
"Paget's going to think this is really funny," she comments. "That we had our car stolen on the way home."
"She'll tell us we should have stayed another day," the man in the hat says.
"Stuff," Chad repeats pointedly. He jerks his head at the Ford. "Guys, come on. See, we're not just standing around with our dicks in the air," he tells Chris. Chris rolls his eyes.
Chris, Jared, and Jensen unload the Ford, load up the Chevrolet, and climb in. At Jared's insistence that they can't just leave the car's actual owners stranded on the side of the road, Chad directs them to sit in the back seat between Chris and Jensen.
"You drive," he tells Jared, who grins excitedly. In any other circumstance, Jensen might find that cute.
"This is an adventure," the woman says. She beams at Chris. "Hello, cutie."
Jensen isn't sure, but he thinks he might be blushing on Chris' behalf. Chris just looks amused.
Jared hasn't driven two minutes when he apparently realizes that he has no idea where they are or where they're going, because he turns his head to look at the back seat just long enough to ask "Do you know where we are?"
"About twenty minutes north of Evansville," the man says.
"Indiana?"
"It was when we left."
"What's wrong with Indiana?" the woman asks, as if she can't believe anyone could dislike her state.
"Nothing," Jared says. "I thought we were in Illinois."
"I thought we were in Kentucky." Chris mutters. "I got a friend - "
"Where are we going?"
"You're driving, you tell us."
"We were going to Indianapolis," the woman offers. "If you wanted to take us home."
"Shouldn't be more than, what, four hours?" the man says. "Maybe five."
Jensen can't tell if they're joking or not.
"Do total strangers often steal your car at gunpoint?" he asks, curious as to why neither of them seems concerned that they've been kidnapped by four strange men.
"I think this is our first time," the man tells him.
"You're not worried we'll hurt you?"
"This one," the woman answers, leaning forward to tap Jared on the back of the head, "didn't want to abandon us. Should we be worried?"
"No," Chris says pointedly, in a tone that Jensen knows is meant for Chad. Chad's still holding the shotgun, although the chances of him being able to use it from the front seat are very slim.
Jared drives and they learn that their kidnappees are called Kirsten and Matthew, and Kirsten is really amused at the thought that they might be married.
"Oh, honey, no," she laughs, when Chad asks.
"Engaged?"
Another laugh.
"A couple at all?"
"Just friends." She grins, pats Matthew on the knee. "Matthew's not my type."
"But don't we look good together?" Matthew asks. He and Kirsten tilt their heads together and make what Jensen can only assume are sultry faces. And then they both pucker their lips like goldfish, spoiling the effect.
"What do you do for a living?" Chris asks them.
"Photographer, artist, and magician," Matthew tells him. "Budding director of stage and... stage. Kirsten builds buildings."
"You're in construction?" Chris looks doubtful.
"Architecture," she says. "I let the boys do the heavy lifting." She digs through her purse to find a little silver card holder. She pops it open and hands Chris one of her cards.
"Huh," he says. "There construction work in Indianapolis?"
"It's not as good as the money we're making now," Chad tells him.
"Oh?" Matthew asks. "What do you do?"
"We rob banks," Chad says proudly. "Ow! Hey!" Jensen and Jared have apparently had the same thought at the same time, because Jared reaches sideways and Jensen reaches forward and they both smack Chad in the head.
Matthew and Kirsten exchange a look that Jensen can't even begin to interpret.
"We can take them," she says cheerfully.
And then Jensen changes the subject.
Jared drives aimlessly for a couple of hours, heading generally north but occasionally going in circles. He clearly has no idea where they are or where they're going, but he listens the three times Kirsten gently tries to direct him. She tells the story of how Matthew dislocated his knee ("We went to a supper club - " "There was no one on the dance floor!" " - and he got so excited he fell and dislocated his knee."), Chad tells the story of how he was disproportionately punished for threatening a man with an unloaded rifle ("It was a pistol," Jared interrupts), Chris embarrasses Jensen with the story of how long it took for Jensen to finally ask out his (now ex-)girlfriend, because it took him that long to realize she was interested in him (this has everyone in the car laughing, because she was not at all subtle), and Matthew does a magic trick using a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper retrieved from Kirsten's purse that causes Chad to demand he do it again. Four times.
"A magician never reveals his secrets," Matthew says loftily.
"I'll tell you how we robbed the - OW. Jesus, Jay!"
"I think we're gonna have to let you fine folks go," Jensen says. It really is high time they were on their way.
"Before I kill me an idiot with a big mouth," Chris mutters.
"I'm not sure where we are," Jared says over his shoulder. It's almost dark now and he's very intent on the road, although the Chevrolet's headlights are very bright and visibility is good.
"You're still in Indiana," Kirsten tells him.
"How can you tell?"
"I've lived here my whole life. A local knows these things."
"We passed a sign for Bloomington about fifteen minutes ago," Matthew says. "I can reveal your secrets." He grins at Kirsten.
Just as Jared didn't want to leave Matthew and Kirsten by the side of the road after Chad hijacked their car, neither does he want to leave them in the middle of nowhere. He turns around, follows the sign to Bloomington, and drops their passengers off on what looks like a major road into town.
"You can probably get a bus home," he tells them. "If anyone asks, tell them we didn't hurt you."
"You can sell out Chad," Chris suggests.
"No one will believe this happened to us anyway," Kirsten says, laughing.
"They'll believe it happened to me," Matthew says.
"Your life does attract a lot of strange...."
When Jared drives off, the two of them have linked arms and are walking towards town.
"We have to ditch the car," Chad says after a few minutes. He sounds disappointed.
"We have to find a place to stay," Jensen adds. "Now we know where we are - "
"We have a road atlas!" Jared announces. "No one remembered!" He waves his hand in Chad's direction. "Find us on the map and get me to a highway."
Outside Terre Haute they pull around the back of a motel and Chad breaks into a new-looking Ford sedan. They switch cars as quickly as possible - Jensen thinks this is a bad idea, too exposed, and says so - and leave Kirsten's business card on the front seat of the red Chevrolet, a circle drawn around her phone number and "Call me for pickup" scribbled on the card.
Chad insists on driving this time and they head north on Highway 41 until they see signs for Chicago. Because Chad is driving, and he wants to see Chicago, they go to Chicago. They even manage to find a nice hotel without getting too lost. Jensen signs the register as Ben Alexander from Houston and gets two rooms with a connecting door.
(He later finds out that as he's getting the rooms, the other three are arguing about what to do with their guns. Chad wants to bring them into the hotel. Chris and Jared talk him out of it.)
"Think it's safe to stay here a couple days?" Jensen asks, flopping onto his back on one of the beds in his and Chris' room. He closes his eyes and just enjoys the softness of the mattress for a minute. "I've never been to Chicago. Don't start thinking about knocking over a bank in the middle of the city." He lifts his hand and points accusingly in what he assumes is Chris' direction.
"I was doing nothing of the kind," Chris tells him, sounding affronted.
"Uh-huh." Jensen opens his eyes and sits up. "I'm starving. Let's find some food." He hauls himself off the bed and opens the connecting door to Jared and Chad's room.
"I should have a nickname," Chad is saying, "like Machine Gun Kelly or Baby Face Nelson or Pretty Boy Floyd."
Jared snickers. "So who would you be," he asks, "Half-Wit Murray?" Chad punches Jared on the arm and looks offended.
"Mayhem. Mayhem Murray."
"They didn't give themselves those names," Chris points out. "The papers did."
"So?"
"You do cause mayhem," Jared muses.
"Either of you hungry?" Jensen asks, changing the subject. His stomach rumbles. Jared laughs.
"You need a steak. Onward!"
A decent steakhouse is not hard to find, and some judicious asking around - and Jared laying on the drawl a little thick - gets them to a speakeasy, which seems like more of an open secret than an actual secret. Chris is pretty sure that two of the men drinking at the bar are cops and the man in the stiff-looking black suit is a federal agent.
"How can you tell?" Chad asks.
"He looks like he's got a pole up his ass. Only government suits are that uptight."
A pretty girl with flaming red hair buys Chris a drink and then leans over his shoulder to chat with him, and he almost gets into a fight with the burly guy who appears three minutes later and lays claim to her.
"You don't want to go to jail," Jensen hisses in his ear. "And I don't want to bail you out."
Chris shrugs him off and holds up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I wasn't hitting on her," he tells the big guy. "She came up to me."
"I think you better leave," the guy says, puffing out his chest.
"I kind of - " Chad starts to say, but Jared's elbow in his side cuts him off.
"We don't want any trouble," Jared says. "We'll go." He hustles a protesting Chad out of the bar. Jensen resists the urge to grab Chris' sleeve as he follows.
"That was unsatisfying," Chad huffs, once they're out on the sidewalk.
"I'll show you satisfying," Chris says. He starts shrugging out of his coat.
"No more drinks for you, Mr Kane," Jensen says firmly, and this time he does grab Chris' arm and starts pulling him down the street towards the hotel. He knows that look on Chris' face, and he doesn't think Chad really wants to be on the receiving end of Chris' fist.
"What do y'all think?" Jared asks as they walk. "I want to stay in Chicago a few days. We'll be fine - no one's going to look for us here."
"It's a gangster town," Chad adds cheerfully, "and we're gangsters."
Part of Jensen would like to disagree - they're not gangsters, they're decent Texans - but since January they've robbed four banks, stolen a number of cars, and kidnapped a couple for several hours. Decent people don't do things like that.
But he can still be a decent person even if he's doing indecent things. He reminds himself that he's stealing from banks that took good people's homes and farms, and he's doing it for his parents and his grandparents and Chris' uncles, and when he doesn't need to any more, when he can make an honest living instead of resorting to criminal activity, he'll stop.
It's like any other job - you do it until you don't have to, or until you find something you want to do more, And they talked about this back in St Louis, didn't they, treating bank robbery like a job. So that's what he'll do. He'll be professional and efficient and careful and he'll make enough money so that someday his parents will stop worrying and he'll be able to take care of himself.
He tells Chris all this later that night, back in their room at the hotel, and Chris tells him to shut up and go to sleep.
Four days later they're in Aurora, two or so hours west of Chicago, and Jensen realizes that, barring some catastrophe, he's not going to stop, and neither are Chris and Chad and Jared. Not when six minutes' work in Benchmark Bank nets them almost nine thousand dollars, and they escape unmolested across Illinois in their stolen Terre Haute Ford.
The next several months pass almost lazily, the boys crossing first Iowa and then Kansas and back through Missouri to Illinois and into Arkansas, stopping a few days here, a week or two there, swapping cars or just license plates when necessary, trying very hard to stay off the law enforcement radar, writing home and occasionally mailing well-disguised stacks of bills. Jensen tries not to worry too much about what his mother must be thinking, how she must be wondering what he's doing to make money.
He tries to think instead about how they've all adopted personas - cheerful, friendly, "we can take this place in four minutes" gangsters. They wear bandannas over their faces like train robbers. They swap positions - who guards the door, who has to drive, who coaxes the bank manager to open the vault. Chad talks them into actually loading their guns, although so far they haven't had to use them. Just carrying them is enough.
Jensen is pretty sure that eventually it won't be enough, but they'll jump off that bridge when they come to it.
And in the meantime, they're almost like four friends on an extended road trip. They drive until late, sleep in fields in nice weather, stop at little roadside cafés and motor courts, send postcards home. They let Jared talk them into driving through the night to see the circus outside Hamilton, Missouri. They argue about where to go next, how long to stay, who's going to drive, who's going to read the map, should they stop and eat now or keep going, Jared do you realize you had lunch just an hour and a half ago?
Chad drives off the road and gets the car stuck in the mud in Middle-of-nowhere, Iowa, and the other three pile out to push. It's a beautiful day despite the mud, and Jensen thinks they probably look like any carefree group of young men pushing their car out of a hole - him in his undershirt and Jared with his sleeves rolled up, both of them braced against the back of the car while Chris leans into the open rear passenger-side door, both his hands pushing against the frame.
"Floor it!" Chris commands, and Chad does. The boys heave. The back wheels spin uselessly, throwing up clots of mud on their pants and shoes. Chris yells at Chad to stop.
"Hey, Chad," Jared calls, shaking out his arms, "put it in reverse. Try rocking it back and forth."
Chad tries that, rocking the car forward and backwards a few times while the other three push, until the car jerks free of the mud and rolls onto drier ground. Jensen's foot skids as the car pulls away and he almost falls on his face. Jared grabs at him and manages to keep him upright.
"Thanks," Jensen says. "Ah, shit." He slaps ineffectually at his muddy clothes. Jared laughs at him.
"Should've taken them off," he says, grinning. He slaps Jensen on the back, then grabs his arm. "Come on, he's gonna leave us." Chad has already started back towards the road, evidently eager to put as much space between the car and the mud as possible. Chris is hanging out the back door, waving at Jared and Jensen to hurry up. They take off after the car, both of them laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.
In July, they plan three days in Kansas City which turn into six weeks because Chad meets a girl named Julie and refuses to leave. Jared reminds him about Kenzie, the girl he was chasing back in San Antonio. Chad says she probably met someone else by now. Chris observes that it would be in her best interests to do so. Chad does not rise to the bait, demonstrating how far gone he is on this skinny redhaired girl.
The other three don't really object to hanging around. Downtime is always nice to have, and the boys kind of like being able to wash in a real bathroom and sleep in a bed more than two nights in a row. Jensen and Chris drag Jared to a few Kansas City Blues games, and even though it's a minor-league team, they've never actually seen major-league baseball, and the Blues more than scratch their baseball itch. Jared laughs at them when they start yelling at the players and the umpire, protesting bad plays and encouraging better ones.
What gets them to leave are two important things. First, they discover there was a shootout at the train station in June, during which a few FBI agents and police detectives were killed along with a bank robber none of the boys have ever heard of, and as a result, law enforcement is looking closely at the the city.
Second, Chad, in his increasingly desperate attempts to win Julie over, confesses the gang's bank-robbing exploits. She sends her brother after him. (It turns out that her brother has a standing poker game with a couple of local cops.) Chris and Jared both have to be restrained from killing Chad dead. Jensen reminds them that robbing banks is one thing, but murder is something else entirely. Besides, blood is a bitch to clean off car seats.
They cross the river into Kansas and make a stop in Lawrence - specifically the Sunflower Bank, with its compliant tellers and recalcitrant vault - and turn south, aiming for the northeast corner of Oklahoma and then Arkansas.
After the Kansas City Massacre in June, during which four good men and one lousy criminal were killed, the order comes down from Washington that all FBI agents are now allowed to carry guns. This means nothing to Jim personally, as he's always been allowed to wear his guns, but it means the world to his office. He wants his boys to be able to shoot back.
Tigerman's shoulder has healed but he can't hit the broad side of a barn, and Jim knows this as fact and not hyperbole because they've been out to his cousin's ranch for target practice. Collins turns out to be a good shot, although he and Detective Downey spend enough time goofing around that Jim is sure one of them is going to shoot his foot off one day. (Downey is so determined to join the FBI that Jim has had to talk to the chief of police about the detective working with his agents instead of with the San Antonio police. And even though Jim thinks Downey is crazy and probably a drug addict, he has to admit that the man can be almost professional when called upon, and is actually a pretty decent detective.) Lindberg's aim is good but not great, and after he accidentally shoots the windshield out of one of the squad cars, Jim takes his gun away.
He's written letters and memos and made phone calls to SACs and Rangers and sheriffs and detectives and FBI agents he knows or has contact with in dozens of cities, warning them about the four men he has followed the newspapers in calling the Jay Gang, but Jim has no leads on these men who robbed his bank and shot his agent, and after six months he's starting to think he'll have to give up. It galls him and hurts his pride, but with Hoover breathing down his and every other SAC's neck about finding the men responsible for the Massacre, he doesn't really have the time to spare. Hoover wants the big names. Nelson. Kelly. The Barkers. Karpis. He won't give Jim the time or the manpower needed to chase down four apparent ghosts. The Dallas SAC, Jim's closest ally as the crow flies, is too busy looking for a couple of local criminals called Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. If Jim wants to find the Jay Gang, he's on his own.
"Chad? What are you doing?"
"Writing a letter to Mr Henry Ford."
They're stopped for a rest outside a little Arkansas town called Batesville, to eat the lunch they picked up at a roadside café and so Chris can check out the car, which has been making funny noises for about an hour. Chad and Jared both think it's fine. Chris still wants to look.
Jensen is trying to take a nap, flat on his back in the grass next to Jared with his eyes closed, and now Jared is apparently talking to Chad about... Henry Ford? Jensen opens his eyes and sits up. This he has to see.
Jared is leaning over Chad's shoulder. "'Dear Mr Ford,'" he reads, "'I've driven a lot of cars' - you mean you've stolen a lot of cars."
"I still drove them," Chad says.
The car Chris is checking over is in fact yet another stolen Ford, this one taken from a dark parking lot in Fayetteville.
"'I've driven a lot of cars,'" Jared continues, "'and your flathead V-8 has them all beat. It is the fastest and most reliable engine I've ever had the pleasure of driving. I would recommend your cars to anyone.' You spelled ‘recommend' wrong. It's only got one c."
"Shit." Chad crosses the word out and scribbles over it. By now Jensen is leaning over Jared, curious to see what Chad's writing. He's a little surprised that Chad has what looks like a new pad of writing paper, as they tend to either use up their stationery writing home, or lose it in transit. "I should probably rewrite it." Chad elbows Jared out of the way - which means Jared accidentally elbows Jensen - and adds "Thank you for producing such a wonderful automobile. Sincerely, Chad Michael ‘Mayhem' Murray" to the end of the letter. "What do you think?" he asks.
"We'll have to remember to stop at a post office," Jensen says, and Jared asks "You're really gonna sign it ‘Mayhem'?"
"Yeah. Why not? It's my name."
Jared rolls his eyes. Chad rips his letter off the pad of paper and starts over, writing slowly so as to make his handwriting as legible as possible. When he's done, he folds the letter in thirds and, to Jensen's further surprise, pulls an envelope out from underneath the pad of paper.
"Where do they make ‘em?" Chad asks.
"What, Fords?" Jared says. "Detroit."
Chad stuffs the letter in the envelope and writes "Mr Henry Ford, Ford Motor Co., Detroit, Michigan" on the front in careful block print. Jared leans over him and helpfully points out that he spelled everything correctly. Chad just elbows him in the stomach again. Jared grabs Chad's shoulders, pushes him down on the ground, and sits on him.
"Get off me, you sasquatch," Chad protests.
"Say 'uncle,'" Jared says serenely.
"You're wrinkling my letter!"
"'Uncle.'"
"Get off!" Chad wriggles and shoves and maybe Jared feels bad for him, because Chad manages to get loose enough to push Jared off and sit on him instead. Jensen, amused, watches them wrestle until Chris yells "Chad! Stop beating up your boyfriend and come look at this!"
Chad pushes Jared off him for the final time, stands up, brushes himself off, and exaggeratedly collects his dignity before walking over to where Chris is gesturing at something under the Ford's hood.
"You know he used to be married?" Jared asks.
"Who?" Jensen says.
Jared inclines his head towards the car, where Chad and Chris are now both peering under the car hood and probably messing with the engine.
"Why?" Jensen asks.
Jared shrugs. "He said he was in love. Her name was Sophia and she was really pretty. She was nice, I liked her. Her dad hated him, though. It only lasted five months."
"Smart girl."
"Nah, they both were too young and stupid to be married."
Jensen wishes that Jared would defend Chad more often in Chris' hearing, because now it looks like Chris and Chad are arguing about something. He can hear their voices rising.
Time to go.
It takes another couple of days before they remember to stop at a post office to mail Henry Ford's letter, and by then Jared has acquired and filled out a postcard for his mom. Chad drops the other three off, and while Chris goes in search of a cold Coca-Cola, Jared tries to befriend a little blonde girl in order to get her to mail their mail.
"Take it in yourself," Jensen mutters. "Or give it to me and I will."
"What if our pictures are on the wall?" Jared hisses. Jensen raises an eyebrow at him.
"That's crazy, Jared. When did the police take your picture? How do they know what we've been doing?"
"Just in case."
Jensen hopes this is just Jared messing around and pretending to be a big-name bank robber, and not paranoia. He can play the part, but he's not prepared to be a genuinely wanted man.
"What's your name?" Jared is asking the little blonde girl. She stares at him. He puts on his most trustworthy face. "I'm Jared."
"Beth," she says. She looks doubtful already.
"Hi Beth. Can you do something for me? If I give you these letters, can you take them to the post office and mail them? I have money." He digs into his pocket and comes up with a handful of coins, which he offers her. She looks unconvinced. "One's for my mom." He holds out the postcard, message side up, so she can read his note. Mom - I'm doing well. Don't worry about me. Arkansas is hilly and green, you'd like it. J. "I'd go myself, but I was just in there yesterday to mail a package and the clerk kept giving me the stink-eye." He drops his voice conspiratorially. "I don't think she likes me."
"Ok." Beth takes the money, the postcard, and Chad's letter. "'Mister Henry Ford,'" she reads slowly, then looks up at Jared with her eyebrow cocked in an expression so similar to Chris' sarcastic "You can't be serious" face that both he and Jensen laugh.
"She looks like Chris," Jensen comments. "He makes that face when he thinks someone's doing something stupid," he explains to Beth. "And then he smacks them upside the head."
"I think he'd like you," Jared adds. "Thank you for helping me avoid that bat in the post office." He stands up. Jensen follows. "You have a good day, Beth." He grins at her and she grins back, quick and bright. She waves at them as they walk away.
The ease with which they've been able to knock over banks and get away clean makes them cocky, and they decide to go back to Chicago despite its proximity to Aurora and the scene of one of their robberies not three months ago. They take their time driving through Illinois, even stopping in Springfield to visit Jared's father's cousin. They've gotten good about lying about their exploits, but when the cousin asks what the four of them are doing and Jared says "Driving around, seeing the country, looking for work", Jensen tells himself it's even mostly the truth.
And it is, for a certain definition of "looking for work".
Halfway between Springfield and Chicago they stop for the night in a field. Chris is driving and it's what he wants to do. The weather is warm but not humid, and it's a good night to sleep outside. They spread themselves out on the grass near the car, shoes and socks off, jackets bunched under their heads.
"You know what I want to do?" Jensen asks. When no one says anything, he goes on. "Learn to golf."
"Golf?" Chris snorts. "Golf's a rich man's game."
"You know how much money we've got sitting in the car from the last couple jobs?"
"Enough so you can join a country club?"
"Just about."
In truth, Jensen has no idea what it would cost to get him into a country club, onto a golf course, and equipped to play, but he's sure he's got enough. They've gotten pretty succesful knocking over banks, and it's kind of fun thinking about what he'll do with his share of their ill-gotten gains, after he's sent enough home to take care of his folks.
Every so often he has to remind himself why he's doing this. They've been lucky so far but he can't let himself forget his parents' reduced circumstances or his own lack of prospects.
"Golf," Chad snickers.
"I think you'd look cute in the pants," Jared says. Jensen props himself up on his elbows to try and get a look at Jared's face, see if he's joking or not, but it's too dark. He flops back down on the ground, blushing.
In September, Jim gets a break, although it's not quite the break he was looking for. He's in his office trying to sort through the mountain of files on his desk when he hears someone yelling his name - "Beaver!" - and he groans. It sounds like Collins, who must have picked that up from Downey. Even Lindberg is starting to do it. Jim will break them all of the habit if it damn well kills them.
"The name's Jim!" he yells back. "What?"
"We got a Kelly sighting!" Now Collins pokes his head into Jim's office. He looks excited.
"A what?"
"Kelly! Machine Gun Kelly! Barnes, what's his first name."
"George." Jim gets to his feet, checks his guns. "Ok, calm down, take me there."
Hoover wants Machine Gun Kelly, and because Hoover wants him, Jim wants him. He doubts this sighting is the real thing, but finding gangsters is his job, and as much as he hates Hoover and as frustrated as he is with the half-assed way the FBI seems to be doing things, he still has to do it. Besides, if he catches the man, maybe he can use it for leverage to get some more agents to help him work the cases piling up on his desk.
His tireless efforts to find the Jay Gang, and his stubborn refusal to quit looking, are starting to pay off - last month he got a call from the chief of police in Lawrence, Kansas, regarding a local bank robbery perpetrated by three men in bandannas. Two were average height and one was taller, and they sounded like Jim's elusive ghosts. He might be obsessed, but his obsession is getting results, if slowly, and if he can lay hands on George Barnes, perhaps he can lay hands on the Jay Gang as well.
Part Four
PG-13
Part 3 of 5
Master post
Art
Summer 1933
Indiana, Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas
One quick job before we disappear, Chris said. We're leaving the state anyway, he said. You can drive, he said.
This will go badly, is what he should have said. And We'll be chased into Indiana. And We might be wanted in Missouri now.
The best Jensen can say about this particular enterprise is that at least they had the foresight to hit a bank in a city besides St Louis, where people might have recognized them.
"It's not my fault this time!" Chad insists, as they speed over the state line into Illinois, escaping the Cape Girardeau police just in time to catch a couple of Illinois cops on motorcycles. "The teller refused me! This is why I need a loaded gun!"
"You would've shot him," Jared says. "Then it'd be San Antonio all over again."
"Well it doesn't matter now," Jensen grits through his teeth. Having motorcycle cops on his ass makes him incredibly nervous - they can flank him and he has no idea how fast this car can go. "We still have company. Why am I driving? I'm not the speed demon."
"We can't stop. Pull off up there." Jared points to a road running off the highway a little ahead of them. He jumped in the front seat next to Jensen when they came tearing out of the bank, and just having him there makes Jensen feel a little calmer. Still nervous about outrunning cops in a state he doesn't know, but the next best thing to sitting next to Chris.
A couple more hours of driving at top speed over an assortment of paved highways, country roads, and dirt tracks takes its toll on an already overextended engine, and Jensen has to pull over when smoke starts leaking out from under the hood. At least the engine waits until he's off the road to cough, belch, and quit entirely.
"Well, shit," he says.
"Ok, that might be my fault," Chad admits. "We never tested the engine like that."
"It did pretty well," Jared says, opening his door and climbing out of the car. "We couldn't use it to advertise our own garage, but we coaxed a little more juice out of it." He tries to wave the smoke away as he walks around the front of the Ford and over to the driver's side. Jensen rolls down the window.
"So what now, Mr Grease Monkey?" he asks. Jared shrugs.
"I guess we walk."
"Walk where?" Chad demands, at the same time Chris says "Oh hell no." He gets out of the car, followed shortly by Chad.
"What do you think we did to it?" Jared asks Chad. "Could we do it again and make it better?"
"I thought we were making it faster." Chad walks around the car and tentatively pats the hood.
"It was faster," Jensen says, "until it died on us." He's going to believe Jared's assessment that all of his and Chad's tinkering actually boosted the Ford's speed.
"Can we maybe discuss doing something besides standing around here with our dicks in our hands?" Chris interrupts. Jensen takes that as his cue to get out of the car.
They debate their options, which boil down to two, really - wait for someone to drive by and offer them a ride, or start walking. At least the car chose to give up the ghost on a decent-sized road, so they're not stranded on some old wagon track in the middle of nowhere and there's a chance someone will appear before dark to rescue them.
There is the matter of the two sacks full of other people's money, not to mention the several firearms in the front and back seats of the car. All their luggage is tied to the back, as well as Chris' guitar and a camera that Jared bought Jensen for his birthday, which is full of pictures of the four of them goofing off and (in Chad's case) sitting on the floor surrounded by stolen cash. They're at least a state removed from the bank in Cape Girardeau, and as far as they know no one's looking for them here, but still, they don't want to take any chances, and whatever they decide, they have to be careful.
After about fifteen minutes, while the four of them are still discussing their options and trying to figure out where they are, a red four-door Chevrolet pulls up alongside them and a man in a straw boater leans out of the driver's-side window to ask if they need some help.
"You have a spare engine?" Jared asks.
"No, just the one we're using," the man says.
"Can we borrow it?" Chad asks. He sounds like he's kidding, but as the driver of the Chevrolet laughs and starts to answer, Chad reaches into the back seat of the old Ford, grabs a shotgun, and aims it at the man in the boater. "I'm serious. Get out of the car."
"Oh, Jesus," Chris mutters.
"We can't take their car!" Jared protests.
"Why not?" Chad says. "You stole one out of someone's driveway."
"I tried to return it."
"Chad - " Jensen starts to say. This is a stupid conversation, for one thing, and the longer they stand around arguing, the greater their chances of getting into trouble.
More trouble, anyway.
"Get our stuff," Chad says. The driver of the car has hustled himself out and is now standing in the road looking a little nervous but mostly confused. "You too," Chad tells the other person in the car, using the shotgun for emphasis. "We needed a car. I got us a car." He peers over the top of the Chevrolet. The car's passenger turns out to be a blonde woman in a melon-colored dress. She also looks a little confused but not particularly nervous.
"Paget's going to think this is really funny," she comments. "That we had our car stolen on the way home."
"She'll tell us we should have stayed another day," the man in the hat says.
"Stuff," Chad repeats pointedly. He jerks his head at the Ford. "Guys, come on. See, we're not just standing around with our dicks in the air," he tells Chris. Chris rolls his eyes.
Chris, Jared, and Jensen unload the Ford, load up the Chevrolet, and climb in. At Jared's insistence that they can't just leave the car's actual owners stranded on the side of the road, Chad directs them to sit in the back seat between Chris and Jensen.
"You drive," he tells Jared, who grins excitedly. In any other circumstance, Jensen might find that cute.
"This is an adventure," the woman says. She beams at Chris. "Hello, cutie."
Jensen isn't sure, but he thinks he might be blushing on Chris' behalf. Chris just looks amused.
Jared hasn't driven two minutes when he apparently realizes that he has no idea where they are or where they're going, because he turns his head to look at the back seat just long enough to ask "Do you know where we are?"
"About twenty minutes north of Evansville," the man says.
"Indiana?"
"It was when we left."
"What's wrong with Indiana?" the woman asks, as if she can't believe anyone could dislike her state.
"Nothing," Jared says. "I thought we were in Illinois."
"I thought we were in Kentucky." Chris mutters. "I got a friend - "
"Where are we going?"
"You're driving, you tell us."
"We were going to Indianapolis," the woman offers. "If you wanted to take us home."
"Shouldn't be more than, what, four hours?" the man says. "Maybe five."
Jensen can't tell if they're joking or not.
"Do total strangers often steal your car at gunpoint?" he asks, curious as to why neither of them seems concerned that they've been kidnapped by four strange men.
"I think this is our first time," the man tells him.
"You're not worried we'll hurt you?"
"This one," the woman answers, leaning forward to tap Jared on the back of the head, "didn't want to abandon us. Should we be worried?"
"No," Chris says pointedly, in a tone that Jensen knows is meant for Chad. Chad's still holding the shotgun, although the chances of him being able to use it from the front seat are very slim.
Jared drives and they learn that their kidnappees are called Kirsten and Matthew, and Kirsten is really amused at the thought that they might be married.
"Oh, honey, no," she laughs, when Chad asks.
"Engaged?"
Another laugh.
"A couple at all?"
"Just friends." She grins, pats Matthew on the knee. "Matthew's not my type."
"But don't we look good together?" Matthew asks. He and Kirsten tilt their heads together and make what Jensen can only assume are sultry faces. And then they both pucker their lips like goldfish, spoiling the effect.
"What do you do for a living?" Chris asks them.
"Photographer, artist, and magician," Matthew tells him. "Budding director of stage and... stage. Kirsten builds buildings."
"You're in construction?" Chris looks doubtful.
"Architecture," she says. "I let the boys do the heavy lifting." She digs through her purse to find a little silver card holder. She pops it open and hands Chris one of her cards.
"Huh," he says. "There construction work in Indianapolis?"
"It's not as good as the money we're making now," Chad tells him.
"Oh?" Matthew asks. "What do you do?"
"We rob banks," Chad says proudly. "Ow! Hey!" Jensen and Jared have apparently had the same thought at the same time, because Jared reaches sideways and Jensen reaches forward and they both smack Chad in the head.
Matthew and Kirsten exchange a look that Jensen can't even begin to interpret.
"We can take them," she says cheerfully.
And then Jensen changes the subject.
Jared drives aimlessly for a couple of hours, heading generally north but occasionally going in circles. He clearly has no idea where they are or where they're going, but he listens the three times Kirsten gently tries to direct him. She tells the story of how Matthew dislocated his knee ("We went to a supper club - " "There was no one on the dance floor!" " - and he got so excited he fell and dislocated his knee."), Chad tells the story of how he was disproportionately punished for threatening a man with an unloaded rifle ("It was a pistol," Jared interrupts), Chris embarrasses Jensen with the story of how long it took for Jensen to finally ask out his (now ex-)girlfriend, because it took him that long to realize she was interested in him (this has everyone in the car laughing, because she was not at all subtle), and Matthew does a magic trick using a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper retrieved from Kirsten's purse that causes Chad to demand he do it again. Four times.
"A magician never reveals his secrets," Matthew says loftily.
"I'll tell you how we robbed the - OW. Jesus, Jay!"
"I think we're gonna have to let you fine folks go," Jensen says. It really is high time they were on their way.
"Before I kill me an idiot with a big mouth," Chris mutters.
"I'm not sure where we are," Jared says over his shoulder. It's almost dark now and he's very intent on the road, although the Chevrolet's headlights are very bright and visibility is good.
"You're still in Indiana," Kirsten tells him.
"How can you tell?"
"I've lived here my whole life. A local knows these things."
"We passed a sign for Bloomington about fifteen minutes ago," Matthew says. "I can reveal your secrets." He grins at Kirsten.
Just as Jared didn't want to leave Matthew and Kirsten by the side of the road after Chad hijacked their car, neither does he want to leave them in the middle of nowhere. He turns around, follows the sign to Bloomington, and drops their passengers off on what looks like a major road into town.
"You can probably get a bus home," he tells them. "If anyone asks, tell them we didn't hurt you."
"You can sell out Chad," Chris suggests.
"No one will believe this happened to us anyway," Kirsten says, laughing.
"They'll believe it happened to me," Matthew says.
"Your life does attract a lot of strange...."
When Jared drives off, the two of them have linked arms and are walking towards town.
"We have to ditch the car," Chad says after a few minutes. He sounds disappointed.
"We have to find a place to stay," Jensen adds. "Now we know where we are - "
"We have a road atlas!" Jared announces. "No one remembered!" He waves his hand in Chad's direction. "Find us on the map and get me to a highway."
Outside Terre Haute they pull around the back of a motel and Chad breaks into a new-looking Ford sedan. They switch cars as quickly as possible - Jensen thinks this is a bad idea, too exposed, and says so - and leave Kirsten's business card on the front seat of the red Chevrolet, a circle drawn around her phone number and "Call me for pickup" scribbled on the card.
Chad insists on driving this time and they head north on Highway 41 until they see signs for Chicago. Because Chad is driving, and he wants to see Chicago, they go to Chicago. They even manage to find a nice hotel without getting too lost. Jensen signs the register as Ben Alexander from Houston and gets two rooms with a connecting door.
(He later finds out that as he's getting the rooms, the other three are arguing about what to do with their guns. Chad wants to bring them into the hotel. Chris and Jared talk him out of it.)
"Think it's safe to stay here a couple days?" Jensen asks, flopping onto his back on one of the beds in his and Chris' room. He closes his eyes and just enjoys the softness of the mattress for a minute. "I've never been to Chicago. Don't start thinking about knocking over a bank in the middle of the city." He lifts his hand and points accusingly in what he assumes is Chris' direction.
"I was doing nothing of the kind," Chris tells him, sounding affronted.
"Uh-huh." Jensen opens his eyes and sits up. "I'm starving. Let's find some food." He hauls himself off the bed and opens the connecting door to Jared and Chad's room.
"I should have a nickname," Chad is saying, "like Machine Gun Kelly or Baby Face Nelson or Pretty Boy Floyd."
Jared snickers. "So who would you be," he asks, "Half-Wit Murray?" Chad punches Jared on the arm and looks offended.
"Mayhem. Mayhem Murray."
"They didn't give themselves those names," Chris points out. "The papers did."
"So?"
"You do cause mayhem," Jared muses.
"Either of you hungry?" Jensen asks, changing the subject. His stomach rumbles. Jared laughs.
"You need a steak. Onward!"
A decent steakhouse is not hard to find, and some judicious asking around - and Jared laying on the drawl a little thick - gets them to a speakeasy, which seems like more of an open secret than an actual secret. Chris is pretty sure that two of the men drinking at the bar are cops and the man in the stiff-looking black suit is a federal agent.
"How can you tell?" Chad asks.
"He looks like he's got a pole up his ass. Only government suits are that uptight."
A pretty girl with flaming red hair buys Chris a drink and then leans over his shoulder to chat with him, and he almost gets into a fight with the burly guy who appears three minutes later and lays claim to her.
"You don't want to go to jail," Jensen hisses in his ear. "And I don't want to bail you out."
Chris shrugs him off and holds up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I wasn't hitting on her," he tells the big guy. "She came up to me."
"I think you better leave," the guy says, puffing out his chest.
"I kind of - " Chad starts to say, but Jared's elbow in his side cuts him off.
"We don't want any trouble," Jared says. "We'll go." He hustles a protesting Chad out of the bar. Jensen resists the urge to grab Chris' sleeve as he follows.
"That was unsatisfying," Chad huffs, once they're out on the sidewalk.
"I'll show you satisfying," Chris says. He starts shrugging out of his coat.
"No more drinks for you, Mr Kane," Jensen says firmly, and this time he does grab Chris' arm and starts pulling him down the street towards the hotel. He knows that look on Chris' face, and he doesn't think Chad really wants to be on the receiving end of Chris' fist.
"What do y'all think?" Jared asks as they walk. "I want to stay in Chicago a few days. We'll be fine - no one's going to look for us here."
"It's a gangster town," Chad adds cheerfully, "and we're gangsters."
Part of Jensen would like to disagree - they're not gangsters, they're decent Texans - but since January they've robbed four banks, stolen a number of cars, and kidnapped a couple for several hours. Decent people don't do things like that.
But he can still be a decent person even if he's doing indecent things. He reminds himself that he's stealing from banks that took good people's homes and farms, and he's doing it for his parents and his grandparents and Chris' uncles, and when he doesn't need to any more, when he can make an honest living instead of resorting to criminal activity, he'll stop.
It's like any other job - you do it until you don't have to, or until you find something you want to do more, And they talked about this back in St Louis, didn't they, treating bank robbery like a job. So that's what he'll do. He'll be professional and efficient and careful and he'll make enough money so that someday his parents will stop worrying and he'll be able to take care of himself.
He tells Chris all this later that night, back in their room at the hotel, and Chris tells him to shut up and go to sleep.
Four days later they're in Aurora, two or so hours west of Chicago, and Jensen realizes that, barring some catastrophe, he's not going to stop, and neither are Chris and Chad and Jared. Not when six minutes' work in Benchmark Bank nets them almost nine thousand dollars, and they escape unmolested across Illinois in their stolen Terre Haute Ford.
The next several months pass almost lazily, the boys crossing first Iowa and then Kansas and back through Missouri to Illinois and into Arkansas, stopping a few days here, a week or two there, swapping cars or just license plates when necessary, trying very hard to stay off the law enforcement radar, writing home and occasionally mailing well-disguised stacks of bills. Jensen tries not to worry too much about what his mother must be thinking, how she must be wondering what he's doing to make money.
He tries to think instead about how they've all adopted personas - cheerful, friendly, "we can take this place in four minutes" gangsters. They wear bandannas over their faces like train robbers. They swap positions - who guards the door, who has to drive, who coaxes the bank manager to open the vault. Chad talks them into actually loading their guns, although so far they haven't had to use them. Just carrying them is enough.
Jensen is pretty sure that eventually it won't be enough, but they'll jump off that bridge when they come to it.
And in the meantime, they're almost like four friends on an extended road trip. They drive until late, sleep in fields in nice weather, stop at little roadside cafés and motor courts, send postcards home. They let Jared talk them into driving through the night to see the circus outside Hamilton, Missouri. They argue about where to go next, how long to stay, who's going to drive, who's going to read the map, should they stop and eat now or keep going, Jared do you realize you had lunch just an hour and a half ago?
Chad drives off the road and gets the car stuck in the mud in Middle-of-nowhere, Iowa, and the other three pile out to push. It's a beautiful day despite the mud, and Jensen thinks they probably look like any carefree group of young men pushing their car out of a hole - him in his undershirt and Jared with his sleeves rolled up, both of them braced against the back of the car while Chris leans into the open rear passenger-side door, both his hands pushing against the frame.
"Floor it!" Chris commands, and Chad does. The boys heave. The back wheels spin uselessly, throwing up clots of mud on their pants and shoes. Chris yells at Chad to stop.
"Hey, Chad," Jared calls, shaking out his arms, "put it in reverse. Try rocking it back and forth."
Chad tries that, rocking the car forward and backwards a few times while the other three push, until the car jerks free of the mud and rolls onto drier ground. Jensen's foot skids as the car pulls away and he almost falls on his face. Jared grabs at him and manages to keep him upright.
"Thanks," Jensen says. "Ah, shit." He slaps ineffectually at his muddy clothes. Jared laughs at him.
"Should've taken them off," he says, grinning. He slaps Jensen on the back, then grabs his arm. "Come on, he's gonna leave us." Chad has already started back towards the road, evidently eager to put as much space between the car and the mud as possible. Chris is hanging out the back door, waving at Jared and Jensen to hurry up. They take off after the car, both of them laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole thing.
In July, they plan three days in Kansas City which turn into six weeks because Chad meets a girl named Julie and refuses to leave. Jared reminds him about Kenzie, the girl he was chasing back in San Antonio. Chad says she probably met someone else by now. Chris observes that it would be in her best interests to do so. Chad does not rise to the bait, demonstrating how far gone he is on this skinny redhaired girl.
The other three don't really object to hanging around. Downtime is always nice to have, and the boys kind of like being able to wash in a real bathroom and sleep in a bed more than two nights in a row. Jensen and Chris drag Jared to a few Kansas City Blues games, and even though it's a minor-league team, they've never actually seen major-league baseball, and the Blues more than scratch their baseball itch. Jared laughs at them when they start yelling at the players and the umpire, protesting bad plays and encouraging better ones.
What gets them to leave are two important things. First, they discover there was a shootout at the train station in June, during which a few FBI agents and police detectives were killed along with a bank robber none of the boys have ever heard of, and as a result, law enforcement is looking closely at the the city.
Second, Chad, in his increasingly desperate attempts to win Julie over, confesses the gang's bank-robbing exploits. She sends her brother after him. (It turns out that her brother has a standing poker game with a couple of local cops.) Chris and Jared both have to be restrained from killing Chad dead. Jensen reminds them that robbing banks is one thing, but murder is something else entirely. Besides, blood is a bitch to clean off car seats.
They cross the river into Kansas and make a stop in Lawrence - specifically the Sunflower Bank, with its compliant tellers and recalcitrant vault - and turn south, aiming for the northeast corner of Oklahoma and then Arkansas.
After the Kansas City Massacre in June, during which four good men and one lousy criminal were killed, the order comes down from Washington that all FBI agents are now allowed to carry guns. This means nothing to Jim personally, as he's always been allowed to wear his guns, but it means the world to his office. He wants his boys to be able to shoot back.
Tigerman's shoulder has healed but he can't hit the broad side of a barn, and Jim knows this as fact and not hyperbole because they've been out to his cousin's ranch for target practice. Collins turns out to be a good shot, although he and Detective Downey spend enough time goofing around that Jim is sure one of them is going to shoot his foot off one day. (Downey is so determined to join the FBI that Jim has had to talk to the chief of police about the detective working with his agents instead of with the San Antonio police. And even though Jim thinks Downey is crazy and probably a drug addict, he has to admit that the man can be almost professional when called upon, and is actually a pretty decent detective.) Lindberg's aim is good but not great, and after he accidentally shoots the windshield out of one of the squad cars, Jim takes his gun away.
He's written letters and memos and made phone calls to SACs and Rangers and sheriffs and detectives and FBI agents he knows or has contact with in dozens of cities, warning them about the four men he has followed the newspapers in calling the Jay Gang, but Jim has no leads on these men who robbed his bank and shot his agent, and after six months he's starting to think he'll have to give up. It galls him and hurts his pride, but with Hoover breathing down his and every other SAC's neck about finding the men responsible for the Massacre, he doesn't really have the time to spare. Hoover wants the big names. Nelson. Kelly. The Barkers. Karpis. He won't give Jim the time or the manpower needed to chase down four apparent ghosts. The Dallas SAC, Jim's closest ally as the crow flies, is too busy looking for a couple of local criminals called Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. If Jim wants to find the Jay Gang, he's on his own.
"Chad? What are you doing?"
"Writing a letter to Mr Henry Ford."
They're stopped for a rest outside a little Arkansas town called Batesville, to eat the lunch they picked up at a roadside café and so Chris can check out the car, which has been making funny noises for about an hour. Chad and Jared both think it's fine. Chris still wants to look.
Jensen is trying to take a nap, flat on his back in the grass next to Jared with his eyes closed, and now Jared is apparently talking to Chad about... Henry Ford? Jensen opens his eyes and sits up. This he has to see.
Jared is leaning over Chad's shoulder. "'Dear Mr Ford,'" he reads, "'I've driven a lot of cars' - you mean you've stolen a lot of cars."
"I still drove them," Chad says.
The car Chris is checking over is in fact yet another stolen Ford, this one taken from a dark parking lot in Fayetteville.
"'I've driven a lot of cars,'" Jared continues, "'and your flathead V-8 has them all beat. It is the fastest and most reliable engine I've ever had the pleasure of driving. I would recommend your cars to anyone.' You spelled ‘recommend' wrong. It's only got one c."
"Shit." Chad crosses the word out and scribbles over it. By now Jensen is leaning over Jared, curious to see what Chad's writing. He's a little surprised that Chad has what looks like a new pad of writing paper, as they tend to either use up their stationery writing home, or lose it in transit. "I should probably rewrite it." Chad elbows Jared out of the way - which means Jared accidentally elbows Jensen - and adds "Thank you for producing such a wonderful automobile. Sincerely, Chad Michael ‘Mayhem' Murray" to the end of the letter. "What do you think?" he asks.
"We'll have to remember to stop at a post office," Jensen says, and Jared asks "You're really gonna sign it ‘Mayhem'?"
"Yeah. Why not? It's my name."
Jared rolls his eyes. Chad rips his letter off the pad of paper and starts over, writing slowly so as to make his handwriting as legible as possible. When he's done, he folds the letter in thirds and, to Jensen's further surprise, pulls an envelope out from underneath the pad of paper.
"Where do they make ‘em?" Chad asks.
"What, Fords?" Jared says. "Detroit."
Chad stuffs the letter in the envelope and writes "Mr Henry Ford, Ford Motor Co., Detroit, Michigan" on the front in careful block print. Jared leans over him and helpfully points out that he spelled everything correctly. Chad just elbows him in the stomach again. Jared grabs Chad's shoulders, pushes him down on the ground, and sits on him.
"Get off me, you sasquatch," Chad protests.
"Say 'uncle,'" Jared says serenely.
"You're wrinkling my letter!"
"'Uncle.'"
"Get off!" Chad wriggles and shoves and maybe Jared feels bad for him, because Chad manages to get loose enough to push Jared off and sit on him instead. Jensen, amused, watches them wrestle until Chris yells "Chad! Stop beating up your boyfriend and come look at this!"
Chad pushes Jared off him for the final time, stands up, brushes himself off, and exaggeratedly collects his dignity before walking over to where Chris is gesturing at something under the Ford's hood.
"You know he used to be married?" Jared asks.
"Who?" Jensen says.
Jared inclines his head towards the car, where Chad and Chris are now both peering under the car hood and probably messing with the engine.
"Why?" Jensen asks.
Jared shrugs. "He said he was in love. Her name was Sophia and she was really pretty. She was nice, I liked her. Her dad hated him, though. It only lasted five months."
"Smart girl."
"Nah, they both were too young and stupid to be married."
Jensen wishes that Jared would defend Chad more often in Chris' hearing, because now it looks like Chris and Chad are arguing about something. He can hear their voices rising.
Time to go.
It takes another couple of days before they remember to stop at a post office to mail Henry Ford's letter, and by then Jared has acquired and filled out a postcard for his mom. Chad drops the other three off, and while Chris goes in search of a cold Coca-Cola, Jared tries to befriend a little blonde girl in order to get her to mail their mail.
"Take it in yourself," Jensen mutters. "Or give it to me and I will."
"What if our pictures are on the wall?" Jared hisses. Jensen raises an eyebrow at him.
"That's crazy, Jared. When did the police take your picture? How do they know what we've been doing?"
"Just in case."
Jensen hopes this is just Jared messing around and pretending to be a big-name bank robber, and not paranoia. He can play the part, but he's not prepared to be a genuinely wanted man.
"What's your name?" Jared is asking the little blonde girl. She stares at him. He puts on his most trustworthy face. "I'm Jared."
"Beth," she says. She looks doubtful already.
"Hi Beth. Can you do something for me? If I give you these letters, can you take them to the post office and mail them? I have money." He digs into his pocket and comes up with a handful of coins, which he offers her. She looks unconvinced. "One's for my mom." He holds out the postcard, message side up, so she can read his note. Mom - I'm doing well. Don't worry about me. Arkansas is hilly and green, you'd like it. J. "I'd go myself, but I was just in there yesterday to mail a package and the clerk kept giving me the stink-eye." He drops his voice conspiratorially. "I don't think she likes me."
"Ok." Beth takes the money, the postcard, and Chad's letter. "'Mister Henry Ford,'" she reads slowly, then looks up at Jared with her eyebrow cocked in an expression so similar to Chris' sarcastic "You can't be serious" face that both he and Jensen laugh.
"She looks like Chris," Jensen comments. "He makes that face when he thinks someone's doing something stupid," he explains to Beth. "And then he smacks them upside the head."
"I think he'd like you," Jared adds. "Thank you for helping me avoid that bat in the post office." He stands up. Jensen follows. "You have a good day, Beth." He grins at her and she grins back, quick and bright. She waves at them as they walk away.
The ease with which they've been able to knock over banks and get away clean makes them cocky, and they decide to go back to Chicago despite its proximity to Aurora and the scene of one of their robberies not three months ago. They take their time driving through Illinois, even stopping in Springfield to visit Jared's father's cousin. They've gotten good about lying about their exploits, but when the cousin asks what the four of them are doing and Jared says "Driving around, seeing the country, looking for work", Jensen tells himself it's even mostly the truth.
And it is, for a certain definition of "looking for work".
Halfway between Springfield and Chicago they stop for the night in a field. Chris is driving and it's what he wants to do. The weather is warm but not humid, and it's a good night to sleep outside. They spread themselves out on the grass near the car, shoes and socks off, jackets bunched under their heads.
"You know what I want to do?" Jensen asks. When no one says anything, he goes on. "Learn to golf."
"Golf?" Chris snorts. "Golf's a rich man's game."
"You know how much money we've got sitting in the car from the last couple jobs?"
"Enough so you can join a country club?"
"Just about."
In truth, Jensen has no idea what it would cost to get him into a country club, onto a golf course, and equipped to play, but he's sure he's got enough. They've gotten pretty succesful knocking over banks, and it's kind of fun thinking about what he'll do with his share of their ill-gotten gains, after he's sent enough home to take care of his folks.
Every so often he has to remind himself why he's doing this. They've been lucky so far but he can't let himself forget his parents' reduced circumstances or his own lack of prospects.
"Golf," Chad snickers.
"I think you'd look cute in the pants," Jared says. Jensen props himself up on his elbows to try and get a look at Jared's face, see if he's joking or not, but it's too dark. He flops back down on the ground, blushing.
In September, Jim gets a break, although it's not quite the break he was looking for. He's in his office trying to sort through the mountain of files on his desk when he hears someone yelling his name - "Beaver!" - and he groans. It sounds like Collins, who must have picked that up from Downey. Even Lindberg is starting to do it. Jim will break them all of the habit if it damn well kills them.
"The name's Jim!" he yells back. "What?"
"We got a Kelly sighting!" Now Collins pokes his head into Jim's office. He looks excited.
"A what?"
"Kelly! Machine Gun Kelly! Barnes, what's his first name."
"George." Jim gets to his feet, checks his guns. "Ok, calm down, take me there."
Hoover wants Machine Gun Kelly, and because Hoover wants him, Jim wants him. He doubts this sighting is the real thing, but finding gangsters is his job, and as much as he hates Hoover and as frustrated as he is with the half-assed way the FBI seems to be doing things, he still has to do it. Besides, if he catches the man, maybe he can use it for leverage to get some more agents to help him work the cases piling up on his desk.
His tireless efforts to find the Jay Gang, and his stubborn refusal to quit looking, are starting to pay off - last month he got a call from the chief of police in Lawrence, Kansas, regarding a local bank robbery perpetrated by three men in bandannas. Two were average height and one was taller, and they sounded like Jim's elusive ghosts. He might be obsessed, but his obsession is getting results, if slowly, and if he can lay hands on George Barnes, perhaps he can lay hands on the Jay Gang as well.
Part Four