Desperadoes, oilmen and Tulsey Town

Tulsa in the early 1930s was a wild, brawling place. The Depression, the Klan, Prohibition, oil wildcatters, bank robbers, brothels, fortunes won and lost overnight -- this is all rich territory for novelists, especially those who like plots with guns. So, it’s no surprise that Elmore Leonard has set his 40th book in the Oklahoma city and outlying areas.

“The Hot Kid” brims with the sly humor, spare prose and razor dialogue we expect from the master. It’s also a cinematic portrait of the former Indian territory at a time of great social upheaval as three characters converge on Tulsa seeking the limelight.

There is Carl “Carlos” Webster, the “hot kid” of the U.S. Marshals Service, tall and handsome as a movie star, who famously tells criminals: “If I have to pull my weapon I’ll shoot to kill.” There is Jack Belmont, the sociopathic son of a millionaire oilman who prefers robbing banks and selling moonshine to living off his father’s money. And there is Anthony Antonelli, a writer for True Detective magazine whose empurpled prose masks his hero worship of men on both sides of the law.

Criminal folk heroes “Pretty Boy” Floyd, John Dillinger and “Machine Gun” Kelly hover on the horizon, although Leonard thankfully is more interested in his fictional characters than in real ones.

But it’s the ladies who steal the show, especially Louly Brown, a “redhead with pure white skin” who claims to be Floyd’s girlfriend because she likes the rush of celebrity it brings. Louly’s no shrinking violet -- she shoots a boyfriend in a cheap motel because she’s had enough of his drunken, bank-robbing shenanigans.

Leonard paints his women with special affection. They may be gun molls, strippers, prostitutes and madams, but they are nobody’s fools. Although Louly collects a $500 reward for killing her boyfriend and will fire a gun once more before the book ends, the others rely on wiles more than weapons.

Not so the men. When a fellow wants another man’s wife in 1930s Oklahoma, he simply shoots her husband dead. Roughnecks go overnight from filthy camp tents to mansions on Tulsa’s wealthy South Side, “where the Princes of Petroleum live” when their gushers come in.

Leonard is great at showing the social mobility that existed during this time of enormous flux, when class, wealth and even racial identity were up for grabs. In “The Hot Kid,” wildcatters strike it rich and millionaires’ sons go to jail. Prostitutes become respectable wives. Marshal Webster is one-eighth Creek Indian and half-Cuban but looks white; eventually, he drops Carlos for the more Anglicized Carl. But some things remain immutable: Despite witnesses, a notorious robber kills a Creek tribal marshal, is charged only with second-degree murder and expects to be out in six years.

“He was a white man Emmett Long’d get life or a seat in the electric chair,” Carl’s father, Virgil, points out.

Leonard’s writing, which over the years has grown as distinctive as David Mamet’s, is a masterpiece of economy. Like the CNN crawl on the bottom of a TV screen, he avoids verbs wherever possible. Conjunctions aren’t his friends either.

And his characters don’t suffer from existential angst. Or if they do, they don’t go on for hand-wringing pages. After 15-year-old Carl kills a cattle rustler, he tells his dad he doesn’t feel so good.

“You took a man’s life today ... did you look at him lying there?”

“I got down to close his eyes.... “

“Looking at him made you think, huh?”

“It did. I wondered why he didn’t believe I’d shoot.”

The relationship between Carl and his father, an oil millionaire who grows pecans on most of his land because “son, we can’t spend the money we have,” is particularly well-drawn. Virgil provides regular reality checks to his celebrity lawman son as they shell pecans on the front porch and sip “sour mash over ice with a slice of orange and a little sugar.”

“It’s what happens you become a famous show-off.... You get a name for shooting outlaws, one’ll come along, try and shoot you to make his own name.”

Which of course is exactly what transpires, ushering in the climax. While “The Hot Kid” doesn’t have the madcap pyrotechnics, frenetic action and over-the-top personalities of some well-known Leonard books-turned-movies (“Rum Punch,” “Get Shorty,” “Be Cool”), the book’s slower pace has its own power and depth.

“The Hot Kid” is also a sly meditation on the seductive powers of the Great Media Satan as the modern age filters into the heartland. Many of the characters are mesmerized by celebrity and try mightily to manipulate themselves into the newspapers.

Bank robbers dream of becoming Public Enemy No. 1 and brag to their girlfriends that “you’re gonna start reading about me.” Louly Brown sits in a fine Tulsa hotel suite and spins elaborate lies to slavering reporters. Marshal Webster wears his brown felt hat perched “just so” and knows he’ll get into the paper each time he kills another bank robber. True Detective writer Antonelli infuses his tales with wobbly details -- a story titled “Massacre at Bald Mountain” occurs on a tree-covered slope. When Antonelli asks rich boy Belmont if he robbed a Kansas City bank, the robber asks where he heard that.

“It was in every paper I picked up.”

“You still have any of ‘em?”

There’s plenty of trademark Elmorean humor, such as when Belmont kills a companion, then uses the dead man’s teeth to open a beer bottle (“broke off a couple of molars before he got the cap off”). His research lends verisimilitude with deftly placed details such as Will Rogers’ radio show, Maybelle Carter records, Lifebuoy soap ads, bay rum and Beechnut “scrap,” period slang for chewing tobacco.

“The Hot Kid” is a self-assured work by an author at the top of his game. Leonard isn’t trying to impress anyone, except maybe the 1930s boy he once was, fascinated by gun-toting desperadoes. And in pleasing that long-ago hot kid, he spins us all a good yarn. *

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From The Hot Kid

Two gas pumps in front of a rickety place, paint peeling, a sign that said EATS and told that soup was a dime and a hamburger five cents.

They went in while a bent-over old man filled their tank, Joe Young bringing his whiskey bottle with him, almost drained now, and put it on the counter. The woman behind it was frail, flat-chested and appeared worn out, brushing strands of hair from her face. She placed cups in front of them and Joe Young poured what was left of the whiskey into his.

Louly did not want to rob this woman.

The woman saying, “I think she’s dry,” meaning his bottle.

Joe Young was concentrating on dripping the last drops into his cup. He said, “Can you help me out?”

Now the woman was pouring their coffee. “You want shine? Or I can give you Canadian whiskey for three dollars.”

“Gimme a couple,” Joe Young said, drawing his Colt to lay it on the counter, “and what’s in the till.”