As soon as I got near Oklahoma City, I felt a mysterious inner needle beginning to vibrate—a needle that, in all of my journalistic wanderings, I had never noticed before. I wasn’t sure what it measured, or if it measured anything at all. But there it was, moving. For the next several years, I followed the vibrations of that needle wherever they

Officer Burnett’s rescuer would have come running out of the county courthouse, a stately New Deal monolith with civic quotes carved onto its limestone face. (HE WHO HAS MOST ZEAL AND ABILITY TO PROMOTE PUBLIC FELICITY, LET HIM BE THE SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC.) Red Kelley’s gigantic pool of blood would have gushed out of him and—as his eyes glazed

Many of the city’s neighborhoods lack sidewalks, intentionally, as a symbol of status, because walking was considered to be outmoded, primitive, impoverished, a little sad, an activity that might even distract the cars, or offend them. You will hear, while you are here, two basic axioms about driving in OKC, each of which seems to violate the laws

Most places have one sky; Oklahoma City has about twelve. There seem to be many different vectors up there, completely unrelated to one another, happening all at once. Sometimes you’ll see silent lightning blinking, very high, in one region, while smooth white clouds slide around low behind you. Will Rogers’s lasso, if you look through it, might be

The tips of his mustache were so long and pointy they almost looked prehensile, like they might reach out and take things off store shelves.

Its on-ramps and off-ramps end, eerily, in midair—entrances and exits to a ghost road that your GPS will keep trying to make you drive on. Ignore it. Drive on the actual roads.

Some vestige of it had survived, however, in Oklahoma. Oklahoma City was only fifteen years old and, after a brief lull, booming again. For a criminal, its red-light district was a safe haven of arson, murder, gambling, drunkenness, bribery, and prostitution. Shoot-outs could be enjoyed indoors or out. Around the time of Red Kelley’s arrival, a man

Drive for fifteen minutes in any direction and the city will begin to blend with the country. You’ll think you’ve left town, but you haven’t. Not even close. It will take many more miles of driving, much more open country, before you’ll see a sign that says, out of nowhere, LEAVING OKLAHOMA CITY.

Red Kelley fit right in. He was angry, petty, and violent. He had big ears and about three mustaches’ worth of mustache.