November Road

by Lou Berney

  And now Guidry had figured out the same corner of the puzzle. Now he possessed that same dangerous information. Throw another log on the fire, shall we? Ye gods. Guidry’s day was just getting shittier and shittier.

  But there was still hope. It was still possible that what had happened to Mackey was a coincidence, that Carlos had bumped him for reasons entirely unrelated to the assassination.

  Guidry knew a source who might be able to shed light. When he reached his apartment building, he bypassed the lobby and went straight to the garage. Chick was sitting crumpled in the booth and staring at the radio like it was his own sweet mother who’d been shot in Dallas. The Negroes thought that Jack Kennedy loved them. Hate to break the news, Chick, but Jack Kennedy was like every smart cat: He loved himself and himself only.

  “Bring my car around for me, Chick, will you?” Guidry said.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Guidry,” Chick said. “You been listening to the news? Good Lord, Good Lord.”

  “You know what the Good Book says, Chick. ‘When thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.’”

  “Yeah you right.” Chick blew his nose into a handkerchief. “Yeah you right.”

  Guidry drove over the bridge to the west bank. He tried the scrapyard first. Armand wasn’t in his little shack of an office, a surprise. Guidry knocked and knocked till his knuckles were numb. It was fine. He knew where Armand lived. Not too far up the road, a tidy little neighborhood of shotguns in Algiers Point.

  Armand’s wife answered the door. Esmeralda, faded Cajun beauty, the crumbling ruins of a once-glorious civilization. Guidry wished he’d known her when. How a tubby motormouth gun peddler like Armand had landed such a prize, it was an enigma to unravel.

  But another enigma had priority right now. Guidry crossed his fingers that Armand could help with the unraveling. Armand had known Mackey for almost half a century. The two of them had grown up together. Armand would know what Mackey had been up to.

  “Sorry to trouble you, Esme, I know it’s late,” Guidry said. Late, but the lights in the house blazed and the smell of fresh-brewed coffee drifted out from the kitchen. Strange.

  “Hello, Frank,” Esme said.

  “I’m looking for Armand. He’s not at the office.”

  “He’s not home.”

  “I wish I could steal you away from him, Esme,” Guidry said. “I know you’ve been married a while, but give me the blueprints and I’ll do what it takes.”

  “He’s not home,” she said again.

  “No? Do you know where he is?”

  Strange, too, that Esme hadn’t invited Guidry in yet, hadn’t offered him a cup of coffee. Every other time that Guidry had come round, now and then over the years, she’d dragged him through the door and pinned him to the sofa and flirted like she was seventeen years old. Usually Guidry had to make like Houdini just to wriggle free.

  And why, if she was still up this late, wasn’t the television or the radio playing? Esme would throw herself in front of the St. Charles streetcar for Jackie Kennedy.

  “He’s gone fishing,” Esme said. “Out to the Atchafalaya for a few days. You know how he loves it out there.”

  In the spring, sure, when the bass were biting. But in November? “When’s he coming home?” Guidry said.

  “I don’t know.”

  She smiled, no strain showing. But Guidry could feel it. Something. Fear? He looked past her, into the house, and saw a suitcase by the kitchen door.

  “My sister in Shreveport.” Esme answered the question before Guidry could ask it. “I’m taking the bus up to visit her this weekend.”

  “How can I get hold of Armand?” Guidry said.

  “I don’t know. Good-bye, Frank.”

  She shut the front door. Guidry walked slowly back to his car. Armand was dead. Guidry resisted the conclusion, but it was the only one he could draw. Armand had been bumped, like Mackey, and Esme knew it. She was scared out of her wits that Carlos would come after her if she breathed a word. Smart lady.

  Mackey had been bumped because he’d arranged for the sniper.

  Armand had been bumped because … That was easy. Because he was Carlos’s most discreet and reliable source of weapons. You wouldn’t know to look at Armand, at the scrapyard shack, but he could get any kind of gun and move it anywhere.

  The evidence mounted. Carlos was clipping the threads that connected him to the assassination. Who next but Guidry?

  No, don’t be ridiculous. Guidry was a valuable asset, et cetera, his perch in the organization only a branch or two beneath Seraphine’s, et cetera. Though that wasn’t as encouraging a notion, Guidry realized, as he’d first assumed. From up here he could see it all, he could see too much, he could put all the pieces together.

  And what about that jittery deputy chief in Dallas, the reason Seraphine had sent Guidry to Dallas in the first place? Did that count as another strike against Guidry?

  As he crossed the bridge back over the Mississippi, the black water below reminded him of the dream he’d had last night. Omens and portents.

  Carlos and Seraphine could have used anyone in the organization to stash the getaway Eldorado in Dallas, someone disposable. Why did they use Guidry? Because, maybe, they’d already decided that his time was up.

  He rented a room at a cheap motel out in Kenner. He didn’t think that Seraphine would make a move before he dumped the Eldorado in Houston, but just to be safe. Guidry always kept a suitcase in the car. A toothbrush, a change of clothes, a couple grand in cash. Saturday morning he stood in the terminal at Moisant and studied the departure board. The flight to Houston that Seraphine had booked for him left at ten. A flight to Miami left at half past.

  Guidry could take the flight to Miami and try to disappear. Suppose, though, he wasn’t on Carlos’s list after all. If Guidry ran now, he’d shoot straight to the top of the charts, congratulations.

  If he ran, he would have to leave behind everything. His life. The smiles and the nods and the bellboys at the Monteleone scrambling to open the door for him, the beautiful redheads and brunettes eyeing him from across the room.

  His nest egg was back in the nest. How the fuck was he supposed to disappear forever with only a couple thousand bucks in his wallet?

  Seraphine might have someone at the airport watching him. Guidry didn’t overlook the possibility. So he moseyed over to the bar and ordered a Bloody Mary and chatted up the cocktail waitress. Not a care in the world, had Frank Guidry.

  After the last call from the gate, he boarded the plane to Houston. Carlos wouldn’t bump him. Seraphine wouldn’t let him. Armand and Mackey—they were beasts of burden, spare parts. Guidry was the right hand of the right hand of the king himself, untouchable. Or so he hoped.

  The Rice, at the corner of Main and Texas, was the swankiest hotel in Houston, with a pool in the basement and a dance pavilion on the roof. The Thanksgiving decorations were out—a papier-mâché turkey in a Pilgrim hat, a horn of plenty overflowing with wax apples and squash. But the lobby felt like a funeral, every step soft, every voice hushed. Kennedy had spent the night before his assassination in a suite here. Probably an enjoyable night, given the stories Guidry had heard about him.

  Guidry’s room on the ninth floor of the Rice looked down on the pay lot across the street. The sky-blue Cadillac Eldorado sat in the back corner, the sun winking off the chrome. Guidry watched the Eldorado for a while. Watched the lot. He counted his money again. Two thousand one hundred and seventy-four bucks. He called down and had room service bring up a club sandwich, a bottle of Macallan, a bucket of ice. Don’t think of it as a last supper. Don’t. He hung his suit coat on the back of the bathroom door and ran the shower, hot, to steam the creases from the wool.

  At four-thirty he walked across the street and tugged on his Italian calfskin driving gloves and slid behind the wheel of the Eldorado. South toward La Porte, window rolled down to flush out the lingering ghost of sweat and Camels and hair oil. Where was he now? The specialist from San
Francisco who took the shot and then drove the Eldorado down from Dallas? Long gone, Guidry supposed, one way or another.

  He stuck to the speed limit, watched for a tail. A few blocks before he reached La Porte, he pulled in to the crowded parking lot of a Mexican restaurant.

  The backseat was clean. He popped the lid of the trunk. Why? Guidry couldn’t say for sure. He just wanted to know everything he could know. He’d been that way since he was running around in diapers.

  An old army barracks bag, olive-drab canvas with a drawstring neck. Guidry opened it. Inside, wrapped in a denim work shirt, was a bolt-action rifle with a four-power scope. A box of 6.5 millimeter shells, a couple of brass casings. Binoculars. The embroidered patch on the work shirt said dallas municipal transit authority.

  Guidry cinched the duffel back up and shut the trunk. East on La Porte, past a few miles of new prefab tract houses that would collapse if you sneezed on them. The houses gave way to the refineries and chemical plants and shipyards. After the Humble Oil refinery, last on the row, a long stretch of virgin swamp and pine. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. Which doped-up English dandy had written that? Guidry couldn’t remember. Coleridge or Keats, Byron or Shelley. One of them. I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

  The sun sank behind him. It wasn’t much of a sun to start with, just a patch of shiny gray in the darker gray of the sky, like the worn elbow of a cheap blazer.

  No other cars, coming or going, not since he’d passed the Humble refinery. The unmarked road was a single narrow lane of broken asphalt and black mud gouged through the trees.

  Guidry turned onto it and then stopped. Go on? Or back up? He idled, thinking. His father used to play a game when he was a little drunk or a lot drunk or not drunk and just bored. He’d hold his hands in front of him and order Guidry or his little sister to pick a hand, right or left. You didn’t win the game. One hand was a punch, the other hand was a slap. Lose your nerve and fail to pick in time, you’d get one of each, good old Pop busting a gut he laughed so hard.

  The road led to a sagging chain-link fence. Gate open. The bottom half of the wooden sign clipped to the gate had splintered off. All that remained was a big red no.

  Omens and portents. Guidry drove on, between the two rows of corroded metal drums, each one as big as a house. When he reached the dock, he put the Eldorado in park and climbed out. Something, the weedy muck at the base of the tanks, made his eyes burn—a rich, earthy shit-rot, a poisonous chemical tang.

  Guidry, once he turned seven or eight years, had refused to play his father’s game—he’d refused to pick left hand or right. A small act of rebellion that he paid dearly for, but Guidry didn’t like surprises. He’d rather take the punch and the slap than not know which one was coming.

  He looked around. He didn’t see a glint of metal, didn’t hear a rustle of movement. But he wouldn’t, would he?

  A heavy chain was looped between a pair of iron cleats, but the key was in the padlock. Seraphine had made this simple for Guidry. Or she’d made it simple for the man sent to kill him. Put Guidry in the trunk when you’re done. Put the car in the channel.

  He dragged the chain to the side and rolled the Eldorado to the end of the dock. The big car hung on the edge for a second—nose down, like it was sniffing the water—and then slid in and under, barely a ripple.

  Walking through the trees back to La Porte. Breathing deeply, in and out. With each step he took, Guidry’s heart thudded a little slower, a little slower, a little slower. He needed a drink and a steak and a girl. And he needed to move his bowels all of a sudden, to beat the goddamn band.

  He was alive. He was all right.

  At the filling station on La Porte, the pump jockey squinted at Guidry. “Where’s your car at, mister?”

  “About a mile up the road, headed due west at forty miles an hour, my wife behind the wheel,” Guidry said. “I hope you’re not married, friend. It’s a carnival ride.”

  “I ain’t married,” the pump jockey said. “Wouldn’t mind to be, though.”

  “Stand up straight.”

  “What?”

  “If you want to have luck with the ladies,” Guidry said. He was in a generous mood. “Head up, shoulders back. Carry yourself with confidence. Give the lady your full attention. You have a phone I can use?”

  A pay phone on the side of the building. Guidry used his first dime to call a cab. He used his second dime to call Seraphine.

  “No problems,” he said.

  “But of course not, mon cher.”

  “All right, then.”

  “You’ll spend the night at the Rice?” she said.

  “Uncle Carlos better cover my tab.”

  “He will. Enjoy.”

  Back inside, Guidry caught the pump jockey practicing his posture in the reflection off the front glass. Head up, shoulders back. Maybe he’d get the hang of it. Guidry asked about the men’s room, and the pump jockey sent him outside again, to the back of the building this time.

  whites only. Guidry entered the single stall and sat down and with great relief released the acid churn he’d been carrying around in his belly for the past twenty-four hours. On the cinder-block wall next to the toilet, someone had used the tip of a knife to scratch a few words.

  here i sit all broken hearted

  tried to

  That was it. Inspiration had flagged or the poet had finished his business.

  When Guidry came out of the men’s room, his cab had arrived. It dropped him at the Rice, and he headed straight to the Capital Club. A few promising Texas bluebonnets were scattered about, but first things first. Guidry sat at the bar and ordered a double Macallan neat, another double Macallan neat, a rib eye with creamed spinach.

  One of the bartenders, blond hair so pale it was almost white, sidled over and asked out of the corner of his mouth if Guidry wanted to buy some grass. Don’t mind if I do. Seraphine had instructed him to enjoy his evening, had she not? The bartender told Guidry to meet him in ten minutes, the alley behind the hotel.

  Guidry had lifted the last sip of Macallan to his lips. You’ll spend the night at the Rice? That’s what Seraphine had asked him on the phone. Why would she need to ask that? She’d booked his hotel room and knew that his return flight departed tomorrow morning. Why would she need to ask that, and why had Guidry not wondered about it until now?

  “I’m a dumb-ass,” he said.

  The bartender watched him. “What?”

  “I left my wallet upstairs.” Guidry gave him a wink. “See you in five minutes.”

  He left the bar and crossed the hotel lobby, past the elevators and out through the revolving door. The bellhop in the porte cochere said he’d whistle up a cab for Guidry, it’d only take a minute. Guidry didn’t have a minute. He walked to the end of the block, turned the corner, and started running.

  7

  Saturday afternoon Barone caught his flight to Houston. On the plane he flipped through last month’s Life. NASA had picked fourteen new astronauts. Buzz cuts, bright eyes, square jaws. Barone couldn’t tell them apart. God and Mom and country. If they wanted to strap themselves to a bomb and go flying through space, Barone wasn’t going to stop them.

  The guy sitting next to him was from Dallas. He told Barone that everyone in his office cheered when they heard the news about Kennedy. Good riddance. The guy said he didn’t know what was worse about Kennedy, that he was a Catholic or a liberal or loved the Negroes so much. Dollars to doughnuts, Kennedy probably had some Jew blood, too. The guy had it on good authority that the Oval Office had a special phone line direct to the Vatican. Jack and Bobby took their orders straight from the pope. The newspapers covered it up because they were owned by Jews. How did Barone like that?

  “I’m Catholic,” Barone said. It wasn’t true, or not any longer, but he wanted to see the guy’s face.

  “Well …” the guy said. “Well …”

  “And I’m married to a colored girl. She’s meeting me at the airport if you
want to say hello.”

  The guy stiffened. His lips disappeared. “There’s no need to get smart with me, friend,” he said. “I’m not trying to start any trouble.”

  “It’s all right with me,” Barone said. “I don’t mind trouble.”

  The guy looked around for a stewardess to witness Barone’s poor manners. When one didn’t appear, he harrumphed and flapped open his newspaper. He ignored Barone the rest of the way to Houston.

  A quarter to six, the plane landed at Municipal. Barone stepped out of the terminal in time to catch the last light of day burning on the horizon. Or maybe just a refinery flaring off gas. The air in Houston was even wetter and heavier than it was in New Orleans.

  One of Carlos’s elves had left a car for him in the airport parking lot. Barone tossed the briefcase in back. Under the seat was a .22 Browning Challenger. Barone didn’t think he’d need a piece, but no one ever ended up in a morgue drawer by being too careful. He removed the screw-on can and checked the barrel for crud. He checked the magazine, the slide. The Browning was accurate up close and fairly quiet.

  The guy from the plane walked across the lot. Barone put the front sight on him and followed along until the guy found his car, got in, drove off. Maybe some other time, friend.

  Traffic. Barone inched along. It took him twenty minutes to get to Old Spanish Trail. The Bali Hai Motor Court was an L-shaped cinder-block building, two stories high, canted around a pool. Every few seconds the glow in the pool shifted from green to purple, from purple to yellow, from yellow to green again.

  Barone parked across the street, in front of a bulldozed barbecue joint. Most of this side of Highway 90 was already a construction site, the roadhouses and filling stations and motor courts torn down to make room for a new stadium and parking lot. When it was finished, the stadium would have a roof, a giant dome you’d be able to see from miles away. Astronauts and an Astrodome, the future. So far only a few curved steel girders had been raised. They looked like the fingers of a hand trying to claw up through the crust of the earth.

  The Bali Hai had two separate sets of stairs that led up to the breezeway on the second floor. Barone had been out last week to look the place over. One set of stairs at the far north end of the building. One set in the middle, crook of the L, in back. Only the maid used those stairs. You couldn’t see them from the pool or the highway or the office.