the Hot Kid (2005) by Elmore - Carl Webster 0 Leonard

fixed him breakfast and he paid me two dollars for it. You ever hear of that? I charge twenty-five cents for two eggs, four strips of bacon, toast and all you want of coffee, and he give me two dollars."
    They got the fourteen from the till and fifty-seven dollars in whiskey money from the kitchen, Joe Young talking again heading for Muskogee, telling Louly it was something told him to go in there. How was this place doing business, two big gas stations only a few blocks away? So he'd brought the bottle in, see what it would get him. "You hear what she said? 'Goddamn you,' but called me 'Mister.' "
    "Charley had breakfast in there one time," Louly said, "and paid her two dollars for it."
    "Showing off," Joe Young said.
    He decided they'd stay in Muskogee instead of crossing the Arkansas River and heading south.
    Louly said, "Yeah, we must've come a good fifty miles today."
    Joe Young told her not to get smart with him. "I'm gonna put you in a tourist cabin and see some boys I know. Find out where Choc's at."
    She didn't believe him, but what was the sense of arguing? It was early evening now, the sun almost gone. The man who knocked on the door--she could see him through the glass part--was tall and slim in a dark suit, a young guy dressed up wearing a panama hat. She believed he was the police, but had no reason, standing here looking at him, not to open the door. He said, "Miss," touched the brim of his panama and showed her his I . D . and a star in a circle in a wallet he held open, "I'm Deputy U . S . Marshal Carl Webster. Who am I speaking to, please?"
    She said, "I'm Louly Brown?"
    He smiled straight teeth at her and said, "You're a cousin of Pretty Boy Floyd's wife Ruby, aren't you?"
    Like getting ice-cold water thrown in her face she was so surprised.
    "How'd you know that?"
    "We been talking to everybody he knows. You recall the last time you saw him?"
    "At their wedding, eight years ago."
    "No time since? How about the other day in Sallisaw?"
    "I never saw him. But listen, him and Ruby are divorced."
    The marshal, Carl Webster, shook his head. "He went up to Coffeyville and got her back. But aren't you missing a motor car, a Model A Roadster?"
    She had not heard a word about Charley and Ruby being back together. Louly said, "The car isn't missing, a friend of mine's using it." He said, "The car's in your name?" and recited the Oklahoma license number.
    "I paid for it out of my wages. It just happens to be in my stepfather's name, Mr. Ed Hagenlocker."
    "I guess there's some kind of misunderstanding," Carl Webster said.
    "Mr. Hagenlocker claims it was stolen off his property in Sequoyah County. Who's your friend borrowed it?"
    She did hesitate before saying Joe Young.
    "When's Joe coming back?"
    "Later on. 'Cept he'll stay with his friends he gets too drunk."
    Carl Webster said, "I wouldn't mind talking to him," and gave Louly a business card from his pocket with a star on it and letters she could feel. "Ask Joe to give me a call later on, or sometime tomorrow if he doesn't come home. Y'all just driving around?"
    "Seeing the sights."
    Every time he caught her looking at him he'd start to smile. Carl Webster. She could feel his name under her thumb. She liked the way he shook her hand and thanked her, and the way he touched his hat, so polite for a U . S . marshal.
    Joe Young returned about 9 a . M . making awful faces working his mouth, trying to get a taste out of it. He came in the room and took a good pull on the whiskey bottle, then another, sucked in his breath and let it out and seemed better. He said, "I don't believe what we got into with those chickens last night."
    "Wait," Louly said. She told him about the marshal stopping by, and Joe Young became jittery and couldn't stand still, saying, "I ain't goin g back. I done ten years and swore to Jesus I ain't ever going back." Now he was looking out the window.
    Louly was curious about what Joe and his buddies did to the chickens, but knew they had to get out of