by Lou Berney
“I told him we’d call him tomorrow. I left him a note.”
Joan considered. “What if he doesn’t see it?”
“I put it right where he’ll see it,” Charlotte said.
On the bathroom counter, next to the big box of Alka-Seltzer. Dooley might overlook the note when he came home tonight, too drunk to brush his teeth, but Charlotte was confident that he’d head straight for the Alka-Seltzer tomorrow morning.
That seemed to satisfy Joan. Her breathing slowed. Charlotte tried to imagine Dooley’s reaction when he read the note, when he grasped that she and the girls were gone. She tried to imagine what her reaction would be if she came home one day and the girls were gone. She would be … obliterated. With nothing left of her for the crows to peck at, as the Bible said, not even the palms of her hands or the soles of her feet.
Dooley wasn’t the most attentive father, but he was the girls’ father. What right did Charlotte have to take Rosemary and Joan from him? What right did she have to snatch them away from everybody and everything they knew, home and school, father and friends? She wanted to give them opportunities they’d never have in Woodrow. But was she destroying their lives instead of saving them?
Charlotte heard the thunk of a car door in the parking lot, the hiss of whispers. She remembered, again, her mother’s warning: There’s always a bumpier road than the one you’re riding on. She got out of bed and made sure the chain on the door was latched.
9
Guidry knew that Seraphine would expect him to scramble. She’d have someone waiting for him to step off every plane that landed in Miami or L.A., every train that steamed into Chicago and Kansas City, every Greyhound that pulled in to Little Rock, Louisville, and Albuquerque.
He had to get out of the country. Mexico. Central America, maybe. But he needed cash and he needed a passport. It was a big, big world. How hard could it be to disappear off the face of it? Oh, so hard if Carlos Marcello was the man searching for you.
Dolly Carmichael lived here in Houston. She’d have plenty of local contacts. A friend with a boat, perhaps? Seraphine might overlook Dolly, since she’d been out of the business for a few years. Dolly might be in the dark.
Was Guidry willing to bet his life on it? On Dolly? He pondered as he stood in the shadows across the street from her house.
No, he decided finally. He couldn’t risk it. At some point Seraphine would remember Dolly. And Dolly would sell him out. Every human heart was rotten meat, but Dolly’s was more rotten than most.
So he turned away. The last Scott Street bus of the night dropped him on Old Spanish Trail. A dozen motels to choose from. He picked one with an astronaut theme. The clerk gave him a room key attached to a miniature balsa-wood rocket. A rocket to the moon! Guidry supposed you had to keep your sense of humor at a time like this.
He slept like a baby, if the baby jerked awake every time the wind rattled the window or a fly buzzed past. In the morning he walked over to the greasy spoon next door. He ordered a plate of corned-beef hash, two fried eggs on top. Hot black coffee, please, and keep it coming. The man at the next table offered him a piece of his Sunday paper. No thanks. Guidry didn’t need any more bad news right now.
Guidry knew how to make friends. That was his gift, his greatest asset. Over the years, working for Carlos, he’d bought thousands of drinks and greased thousands of palms, laughed at thousands of bad jokes and listened with convincing sympathy to thousands of sob stories. He had a girl in every port. A girl and a busboy and a bookie and an assistant district attorney. But who among them, now that Guidry was on the wrong side of Carlos, could he ask for help? Who among them would even bat an eyelash before they sold Guidry down the river?
Picture Tantalus in hell, dying of thirst as he stood in the pool of cool water up to his neck.
No planes, no trains, no buses. Well, that made Guidry’s next step a simple one.
“Is there a car lot around here?” he asked the waitress. “Used cars, not new.”
“Why don’t you go see for yourself?” the waitress said. “I’ll keep your plate warm for you.”
“You’re just a golden ray of sunshine, aren’t you?”
“Two stoplights up, on the left. You ain’t gonna eat that?”
“I’ll have some white toast. Dry.” Guidry pushed the plate of hash away. His stomach hadn’t recovered from yesterday. Maybe it never would.
Big Ed Zingel in Las Vegas. Guidry couldn’t think of another option. Try as he might. Big Ed Zingel. Ye gods, Guidry’s life had come to this. Ed liked Guidry. He could be generous if you caught him in the right mood. And—this was the salient fact—Ed hated the Marcello brothers the same way Carlos hated the Kennedys. So give him an opportunity to screw over Carlos by helping Guidry and he’d jump at it.
Or he wouldn’t.
Guidry had always taken a simple approach to life: live it loose and easy, let it roll off and over you. Well, easier said than done these days. But he couldn’t let himself brood about it, just how badly fucked he was.
The man at the other table put down his newspaper. Guidry could see one of the headlines, a story about the surgeon who’d worked on Kennedy at Parkland in Dallas. “he never knew what hit him,” says dallas doc.
The used-car lot was open on Sunday. A lanky salesman came loping over. Guidry was probably the first customer he’d had all weekend.
“How’re you?” the salesman said. “Name’s Bobby Joe Hunt.”
“Like Bobby Joe Hunt who pitches for the Pittsburgh Pirates?” Guidry said.
“Even better,” the salesman said.
“No.”
“In the flesh.”
Guidry had watched Bobby Joe Hunt get shellacked in the World Series a few years ago. “Did you retire?”
“No,” Bobby Joe Hunt said. “I work here during the off-season.”
“They don’t pay you fellas enough, do they?” Guidry said.
“Not nearly. What can I help you with?”
Guidry looked around and settled on a 1957 Dodge Coronet with four bald tires and a hamster on a wheel where the engine should have been. Maybe it wasn’t quite that bad. Guidry got the price down a couple hundred after some parry-and-thrust. Bobby Hunt negotiated better than he’d pitched against the Yanks. He agreed to put a set of nearly new tires on the Coronet and swap out the old belts for fresh ones.
Guidry drove back to the motel and packed his suitcase. He pictured Seraphine in her office out on Airline Highway. Curtains drawn to block the light, just the desk lamp on. She’d have been up all night, would’ve made all the calls she needed to make by now. She’d be smoking, thinking, picturing him. Wondering, Where are you, mon cher? Where do you think you’re going?
Two possible routes led to Big Ed Zingel in Las Vegas, the northern and the southern. Head up 75 to Dallas and then 287 to Amarillo and 66. Or follow 90 and the new interstate due west to San Antonio and El Paso. Flip a coin—Carlos owned every inch of Texas. The coin came up tails. Go north, young man. Why not?
Downtown Dallas on Sunday afternoon was a graveyard. The cops still had Dealey Plaza blocked off, so Guidry looped the long way around. Forty miles east of Amarillo, he stopped to gas up the Dodge and get something for dinner. A town called Goodnight. He didn’t like that name. Omens and portents.
There was a diner next to the filling station. Guidry took a seat at the counter and ordered the chicken-fried steak. It arrived as advertised, chopped steak fried like a chicken and then covered with cream gravy to hide the crime. Guidry tried not to think how he’d probably never taste a real roux again, or red beans that had been simmering in a pot all day. Funny what mattered to you, the little things.
“I just cain’t get over it,” the waitress said when she topped his coffee. She was younger and friendlier and prettier than the waitress back in Houston.
“Kennedy?” Guidry said. “Oh, it’s just awful.”
The waitress eyed him. “You didn’t hear?”
“Hear what?”
Jack Ruby? Who ran one of the sleaziest strip clubs in Dallas? Who, every chance he got, sidled up and tried to weasel himself into Guidry’s good graces? What did Jack Ruby have to do with anything about anything?
“He shot Oswald,” the waitress said.
“Jack Ruby did?” Guidry said.
“Right in the stomach,” she said. “When they was bringing Oswald downstairs, at the police station. He walked right up and shot him dead.”
Guidry made the appropriate noises of shock and distress to hide his genuine shock and distress. Seraphine had hinted that Oswald’s days were numbered. But this … At the police station? With Oswald surrounded, presumably, by a mob of cops and reporters? It was just another ominous reminder Guidry didn’t need: that Carlos could get to anyone, anywhere, at any time.
The door opened. A cop entered and took a seat at the counter, two stools down. He touched the brim of a cowboy hat that was the same dirty white as the cream gravy.
Guidry nodded back. “Sheriff.”
The cop’s big ears pinked up. He was just a lad, raw-boned and weak-chinned. “Deputy,” he said.
“What’s that?” Guidry said.
“I’m a deputy, not the sheriff.”
“Beg your pardon. But one of these days you’ll get there, just you wait.”
The cop didn’t know if he was allowed to smile or not. He concentrated on his knife and fork and napkin. Guidry had taken only two bites of his chicken-fried steak. First the news about Ruby, now a goddamn deputy sitting six feet away.
Guidry couldn’t get up and walk out, not yet. Wait a minute, take your time, create the impression of a relaxed and happy man. The deputy had no reason to be suspicious of Guidry, none at all. He was just your typical cop, giving the stranger from out of town—the city slicker in the fancy suit—the typical cop once-over.
“Passing through?” the deputy said.
“That’s right.” Guidry showed him the business card. “Bobby Joe Hunt, Greenleaf Used Automobiles in Houston. I’m on my way to a car auction in Amarillo.”
The waitress scowled. “On a Sunday? That don’t seem right, does it? That they’d have a car auction on Sunday?”
Why, thanks for chiming in, sweetheart, Guidry thought. What would we ever do without you?
“Well, the auction’s not till tomorrow,” he said. “I’m spending the night in Amarillo because I heard some advice about early birds and worms.”
“It don’t seem right to me, that folks should have to work on Sunday,” the waitress said. “They should be at church or home with their loved ones.”
“Hear, hear,” Guidry said.
The deputy squinted at the business card. “Bobby Joe Hunt. He’s that pitcher for the Pirates. He’s from Houston too, ain’t he?”
Guidry ate steadily. Not too slowly, not too quickly. He noticed he was about to strangle the handle of his coffee mug to death and loosened his grip.
“You know your baseball, Deputy,” Guidry said. “Yes he is, matter of fact. No relation to me, I’m afraid.”
“I got his baseball card,” the deputy said. “I got every baseball card from 1957 through to 1963. Topps cards. I don’t have no interest in the Fleer. All Fleer’s got is Ted Williams, and I wouldn’t walk across the street for a Ted Williams card.”
“Eat your supper, Fred, and stop boring the poor man to death.” The waitress saw that Guidry was almost finished with his steak and brought over the tin pie stand. “Pecan pie, fresh as the day it was baked.”
“Why, thank you,” Guidry said.
The deputy shifted on his stool to study Guidry. “Passing through, you say?”
“He already said so, Fred.” The waitress gave Guidry a clean fork for the pie. “Don’t mind him, mister. Usually takes him a minute to get out of first gear.”
Guidry turned to face the deputy. “You played some ball yourself, I bet.”
“Yessir, I did,” the deputy said.
“Any good at it?”
The deputy’s ears pinked again. “All-County third base, two years in a row.”
“Ask him how many high schools we got here in the county,” the waitress said.
“Lord Almighty, Annabelle,” the deputy said. “You wear a soul out.”
Guidry had finished the slice of pie in four big bites. He put his money on the counter and stood. In no hurry at all. He’d heard a story about Art Pepper, how once he’d strolled out of a police station with a bag of dope in the pocket of his sport coat. Guidry’s hero.
“Well, I better hit the road,” Guidry said. “Happy Thanksgiving in advance. God bless us everyone.”
The deputy studied Guidry for another few seconds and then touched the brim of his hat. “See you,” he said.
The prairie, weathered and leathery and endless. Like God meant to get around to it during Creation but had run out of steam. Twenty miles outside Goodnight, the sun puddling golden and red on the horizon, Guidry started to loosen up about the deputy. He shouldn’t have been worried in the first place.
Half a mile later, he saw the patrol car coming up fast in his rearview mirror, the siren wailing and the lights flashing.
10
Barone didn’t get finished with Carlos’s hophead Mexican doctor until almost midnight, so he had to stay and spend Saturday night in Houston. He didn’t sleep much. The hand that the knife had gone through kept waking him up, throbbing, reminding him that it still hurt. Don’t worry, I remember. The hophead doctor had given him some pills for the pain, but they didn’t have much punch. Barone took double what the doctor instructed and could barely feel a difference. He thought that the pills might be sugar and the doctor had kept the good ones for himself.
The doctor had informed Barone that he was lucky. It didn’t look as if the blade had severed tendons or sliced through anything too important. The doctor took a snort of dope before he started stitching the hand up. He explained that the dope steadied his nerves. He said his father had been a doctor, too, and one time in Chihuahua had removed a bullet from the leg of the bandit Pancho Villa. Barone told the doctor to shut up and pay attention to what he was doing. The doctor said that Villa’s notorious compadre Rodolfo Fierro stood by during the entire procedure with a gun pointed at the father’s head. Rodolfo Fierro, who later would become known as “El Carnicero,” the butcher.
Barone asked the doctor if he should point a gun at his head—would that help him pay attention? The doctor giggled. No, no, my friend, he said, and took another snort.
Sunday morning Barone drove back to the airport. His flight didn’t leave until one o’clock. Barone couldn’t wait to get home. In New Orleans he could go to a real doctor who wasn’t just bat wings and chicken blood. Carlos’s doctor in New Orleans had a fancy office on Canal Street. He lived in a Garden District mansion and rode a float on Fat Tuesday. He’d give Barone the good pills.
Barone went into the men’s room and checked under the bandage. The stitches in his hand looked okay. Two sets of them, the back of the hand and the palm.
In the terminal he found a seat not far from the one television set and watched Ruby shoot Oswald. The cops tackled Ruby afterward. Ruby never stood a chance of getting away, the middle of police headquarters.
Ruby must have known, going in, that he didn’t stand a chance of getting away. So why’d he do it? What made a guy agree to go to the electric chair for you? Carlos must have scared him with something even worse than the electric chair.
A few minutes before the plane was supposed to board, a guy sat down next to Barone. The guy didn’t look over at him.
“Call her,” the guy said. “Right now.”
He stood and walked away. Barone stood and walked over to the pay phone.
“I asked you to call last night,” Seraphine said.
“I don’t call unless there’s a problem,” Barone said. “There wasn’t a problem.”
“You were supposed to
stay at the Shamrock.”
“Why do you need to know where I’m staying?”
He heard a match scratch and blaze. “There’s been a change of plans,” Seraphine said.
“Not for me. I’m coming home.”
“We need you to stay in Houston.”
Barone watched the stewardess for his flight come out and adjust her pillbox hat and smile at the people waiting by the gate. Tickets, please. Barone set his bum hand on top of the pay phone. The throbbing eased for a second.
“I know you’ve been a busy bee, mon cher,” she said. “I know you must be weary, but duty calls.”
“I’m about to get on the plane,” Barone said.
“I said I was sorry.”
“No you didn’t. Carlos needs me to stay in Houston? Or do you?”
“He’s taking a nap,” Seraphine said. “Shall I wake him so that you can discuss?”
Bitch. “Who is it?”
“Frank Guidry. Do you know him?”
“I’ve seen him around,” Barone said. “I didn’t know he was on the list.”
“Remy was supposed to take care of it,” she said, “since you were otherwise disposed. He was supposed to collect him at the Rice last night, but our friend failed to appear. So says Remy.”
It sounded like Seraphine was thinking the same thing Barone was thinking. Remy was trying to cover his ass. He was dumb as a brick and had probably spooked his mark. At least this gave Barone a place to start.
“I want to make it absolutely clear,” Seraphine said. “This is now a matter of the highest priority.”
Because you fucked up and used Remy instead of me. But Barone didn’t say it. Seraphine already knew it. She knew that Carlos already knew it, too. Good. Let her sweat.
“Do you understand, mon cher?” she said.
“Does Guidry have a wife?” Barone said.
If Guidry had a wife, Barone’s job would be easy. Find the wife, wait for Guidry to call her. Guidry would call at some point—the husband always did. And then Barone would hold the phone close to the wife’s mouth. He’d let Guidry imagine what had happened to her so far. Let him imagine what would happen to her if he didn’t come in fast.