The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  “Try to lose ourselves in the damned city,” Hector said. “It’s no New York or Chicago, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to hide there than in these tinier Buckeye environs. And I have some contacts of my own in the Bureau, trusty folk. Honest ones, and time-tested. Least ways, they don’t always lockstep behind old J. Edgar’s nefarious marching orders.”

  Katy just shook her head. “These FBI friends of yours, are these men in Cleveland, or in D.C.?”

  “The latter,” Hector said.

  “Then it might as well be China,” she said, sour-voiced.

  “They have their own friends,” Hector said. “They may know some honest agents in Cleveland. And more importantly, Jimmy has friends in Cleveland, too.”

  Jimmy held up his badge. This time he held it so she could read the locale emblazoned on his tin. “So you see, Cleveland is Jimmy’s town,” Hector said. “Now, are you two going to try and bolt on us? I hope not, because standing guard on you three is getting tedious and cramping our damn style. It’s a drain on our energies that could best be spent helping you gals. You really don’t want us distracted.”

  “We’re with you two lugs for better or worse now,” she said. “Who else do we have? I don’t think you can truly help us in the end, but our chances without you are hopeless. Today has made that clear.”

  “This damned ledger,” Jimmy said, “you’ve got it on you? It might be better if we sent it ahead of us, via mail, or something. Surely wouldn’t do to be caught with it. That’d be a colossal mistake. Endgame, stuff, really.”

  “The ledger is just pages of stray paper now,” she said. “I tore them lose from the binding, the better to hide them, you know? They’re safe enough and I’m not letting those pages out of my sight. They’re my bargaining chip. They’re our life insurance. For my baby and I.”

  Sighing, Hector stretched his fingers in front of the car’s heater vent, still trying to warm them. “Meg and you should be blood enemies, Kate. How’d you end up in cahoots, particularly with such life-and-death stakes in the mix? Have to confess, the dynamic between you two women has me plum foxed.”

  Katy shrugged. “How terrible for you, then. I’m afraid you’ll simply have to stay foxed, Mr. Lassiter.” She nodded. “Here they come back.” Edge in her voice as she said that last.

  Hector turned, watching the two cross the icy lot together. The little girl had one hand wrapped around the pretty moll’s hand. Shannon’s other arm was wrapped tightly around her dolly.

  Something there, a thing Hector still couldn’t put his finger on.

  He looked at Jimmy. The Irish cop nodded and said softly, “Yes, me too. And yes, me neither. Not yet, at any rate.” Jimmy wet his lips. “But I will figure it out of course. It’ll come in due course, as it always does.”

  5

  Passing through Warren, Ohio, Jimmy and Hector decided it was best to get off the most obvious trail to Cleveland. Consequently, they cut across a wide spot in the road called “Delightful” where an old filling station attendant assured them rural roads were open all the way through to Twinsburg. That path would take the quintet into Cleveland, via Maple Heights.

  But it was a white-knuckle drive all the way northwest.

  The drifts and plowed piles of snow stood two- or three-feet higher than the roof of the Chevy. To Hector’s mind, it was like driving through the launch chute of a pinball machine—the monotony of those high, white walls began messing with Hector’s eyes. A glossy veneer of ice also covered the pavement. Hector was soon regretting having turned down the car dealer’s offer to equip his new car’s tires with a set of snow chains.

  Jimmy said softly, “We’ve both been profligately to and fro in this mad, bad world, Hec, and plenty at that. Yet I have to say, I’ve not seen snow like this, not ever.”

  Hector nodded his agreement, keeping his eyes on the road and his hands firmly on the wheel.

  Shannon yawned loudly. Jimmy smiled and began to sing “Carrickfergus,” lullaby smooth:

  So I’ll spend my days in this endless roving

  Soft is the grass and my bed is free

  Ah, to be home now in Carrickfergus

  On the long road down to the salty sea.

  Eventually Jimmy veered into Gaelic: “Do bhí bean uasal.”

  Somewhere around Aurora, Katy said softly, “Shannon’s asleep.”

  “Poor child has had the Devil’s own hard and trying day, and that’s for certain,” Jimmy said. “I could sleep myself, I think.”

  “Do that if you want,” Hector said. “God knows there’s no scenery with this goddamn snow.” Hector smiled. “But don’t expect me to serenade you to sleep.”

  “Shall sleep later,” Jimmy said. “Wouldn’t want the ladies ganging up on you.” He shook his head and said, “Any objections to me turning up the heat a few notches?”

  “Not at all,” Meg said. Hector saw her rubbing her arms with her hands. She’d spread her fur wrap over the sleeping child. Katy was still wearing her coat.

  Jimmy said, “I’m parched. Could use a fiery drink.” He fished around in his overcoat pocket and produced a silver flask. “Sweetest Jameson,” he said. “Any takers?”

  Meg smiled and shook her head. She opened her purse and pulled out her own flask. “Bourbon,” she said.

  Katy produced a third flask. “Gin.”

  Jimmy waved his flask at me. “You surely won’t disappoint me, will you, Hector?”

  Steering with his left hand, Hector reached down into the cuff of his right boot and retrieved his own flask. “Whisky without the ‘e’,” I said. “Single malt, in other words.”

  Jimmy snorted. “Ah, you Sasanach heathen! God love ya at least for your taste in booze.”

  They hoisted their four flasks. Hector toasted, “Pro rege et patria,” then he added, “Ain’t we the sorry juicer quartet?”

  ***

  They found themselves a motel on the outskirts of Shaker Heights. Still at least naggingly uncertain in their minds whether the women might try and dash on them at any instant, Jimmy and Hector got adjacent rooms with a connecting door they agreed would be left open all night.

  Hector sat with the women while Jimmy made some calls back to Cleveland and his cop confreres.

  Hector said, “You ladies hungry for supper? There’s a diner across the lot. We should eat while we have the chance.”

  Shannon, looking up at him with big shiny eyes, made it clear she was starving.

  Meg said, “But your friend, Mr. Hanrahan?”

  “He’ll find us,” Hector said. “Hell, he’s a detective after all, and one of the rare good ones.”

  ***

  It was dusk and the heavy snow flurries flitted, glittering in the parking lot lights. Hector watched Jimmy making his way toward them, snow swirling around him. Hector stood and slipped on his overcoat and put on his hat. “You ladies eat up. Be back in a jiffy.”

  He left them there with their diner food, the joint only had one way in or out and Hector figured to park his ass outside that single door. He met Jimmy under the diner’s metal awning. Jimmy fished out a Lucky Strike and leaned into Hector’s old Zippo. “You don’t look so right, Jimmy.”

  “Christ, Hector, I almost wish I hadn’t placed that damned phone call.”

  “Who did you talk to, Jim?”

  “Josh Gordon, my partner. He’s the one cop in Cleveland I trust, and I mean all the way up.”

  Something strange in Jim’s voice; Hector felt this void yawning close. Their breath was frosty on the night air. Their cigarette smoke trailed from their mouths and nostrils in sinister tendrils. Hector figured they must look like fidgety dragons through the frosted-over display window. He said, “And what did your partner have to say?” Hector didn’t like the sound of his own voice, suddenly. Jimmy’s palpable unease was maybe contagious, Hector thought.

  “My badge isn’t going to do a lick of good for us, I fear,” Jimmy said. “If that woman’s monster husband all but owns the Youngstown police
force, his fingers reach deep into Cleveland, too. Word is out on both of us. By that I mean about who we’ve got and what Kate means to do to Vito given less than half a chance.”

  Jimmy rubbed his neck and sighed. “I’m trying to figure out how they made me. Enough guys from the old days know you and me to be friends. I guess maybe me being in Youngstown too might have been enough for some to figure I’d throw in with you to protect the gals.”

  Jimmy blew smoke out both nostrils. “Hell, either way, we’re up against it hard, Hec. Anyway, it seems I’m going to have my own people keeping an eye peeled for me. Some of them are ready to sell me out.” He spat into the snow and said, “Crooked sons of bitches.”

  “There is one good thing,” Hector said. “If they run a DMV check on me they’re going to be looking for a blue Chevrolet Fleetmaster Convertible. That was my previous car. I’ve still got temporary tags on the new one. Only bought it two days ago, and it being the start of the weekend, well, we get a few days’ leg up.”

  “At best, that buys us a few more days before the county offices open up and that auto registration gets updated,” Jimmy said. “After, we’re squarely behind the eight ball on that front, as well.”

  Hector looked across the street at a five-and-dime. Scads of gaudy toys littered the front window. Sleds and air rifles were arrayed amidst puffy piles of artificial snow. A placard in the window told how many shopping days remained until Christmas. Hector did some math and realized that there were not many left at all. He thought that countdown might have meant more if he had anyone to buy gifts for this year.

  So far, it was another of those kinds of Christmases. There had been too many of those kinds of Christmases in his life.

  “I’m freezing my ass off out here,” Hector said. “Let’s get back in there and warm with those gals. Put on brave faces. Get some grub for you and then I think we divide up. You take Katy and the little girl back to the rooms and see what more you can get from her. I’ll focus on Meg.”

  “That’s about all you’ve done since you laid eyes on that pretty, long-stemmed piece of trouble.” Jimmy held up his big hands as Hector started to object. “Just saying what I see, Hec. It’s no big deal. As always, I expect you to be you, and so far, Hector, you haven’t disappointed, and thank God for that—I mean given the promised mayhem.”

  Jimmy shook his head and stared at the end of his cigarette. He said, “That gal in there is no Duff Sexton. Based on tales you’ve told me of her in your cups, Meg’s certainly no Brinke Devlin, either. You step careful around this one, yeah?”

  6

  Meg watched the trio walk back across the lot to the hotel, Shannon holding hands with Katy and Jimmy gripping Katy’s other arm at the elbow, steadying the woman on the icy pavement as she tottered on her heels.

  Meg said, “So is this some divide-and-conquer strategy you boys have in mind?”

  Hector sipped his cream-laced coffee. “Afraid you’re gonna have to define conquer for me, Meg.”

  “Sure. I mean cop tricks, though you insist you’re not a cop. But you easily could be, you know. You have that kind of mind and the right kind of wrong-headed attitude. I suspect you and Hanrahan angle to split us up and see if our stories mesh. I suspect that you aim to undermine Katy’s and my bond to one another. I suspect you two men mean to run some good-cop bad-cop act on us. Is that your strategy?”

  Hector brushed a comma of hair back off his forehead. “Bond, you said. Singular. Not bonds, but bond. So there is just one solitary thing holding you two together.” Hector sipped more of his coffee. “What is it exactly that has bound you to that woman, darlin’?”

  Meg just looked at him. She at last said, “Damned author. You would seize on the nuances of a single word, wouldn’t you?” That snide observation struck Hector as a diversion.

  “Writer or no, I can maybe make some good guesses as to what’s happening,” he said, pointedly ignoring Meg’s crack about his craft.

  She shrugged and sipped her coffee. “So do it, Hector Lassiter. Take your best shot, you writer.”

  Hector put it out there with one true word: “Shannon.”

  Meg flinched. Hector of a sudden felt like a heel. She said, “I like that little girl plenty. I don’t want to see her hurt.” Her eyes didn’t meet Hector’s when she said all that.

  “It’s much more than that, honey. Don’t insult my intelligence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The hair color is a tipper, Meg. I’d like to say it’s in the eyes and the bone structure, too. The smile. And I suppose it is, though I didn’t see it at first. Mostly it’s just the way you look at that child that clued me in.”

  “What are you saying, Hector?” Her tone made him squirm just a little.

  He offered her a cigarette and she held up a hand. “I don’t smoke.”

  “Then neither will I presently,” he said.

  “You were saying?”

  “I was about to say Shannon is your blood, Meg. Shannon is your daughter. Isn’t she?”

  Meg just looked at him, her eyes smoldering.

  He pushed ahead. “I don’t pretend to fathom how that can be, Meg. But I know to my bones I’m right. That little girl is your blood.”

  Meg sat back in the booth and crossed her arms over her chest. Her eyes were focused on something very far away now, those blue eyes verging on violet, just like Shannon’s. Violet eyes, pulling the rug from under a ruse, again. Hector shook his head to escape the déjà vu. Sometimes it struck Hector if God maybe did exist, the old bearded fella was a sorry-ass, one-trick pony.

  “There’s a bar around the corner,” she said. “I could use a real drink.”

  “Me too,” Hector said, voice going to gravel. “Maybe even several drinks. Let’s go get some of those right now.”

  ***

  It was bitterly cold and windy. “Damn lake effect weather,” Hector said aloud as the wind whipped the tails of his coat and made his eyes tear up again. He slipped a bit on the sidewalk, despite his newish Catspaw heels. He took one look at Meg’s high heels and offered her an arm. She considered the overhead lights’ glare on the treacherous concrete, then slipped her arm around Hector’s.

  She nodded across the lot at the fuzzy lights of their lodgings, winking through the flurries. “Some dump you two checked us into.”

  “Hell, it’s merely rustic,” Hector said. “Americana. Sorry if my pockets don’t run so deep as your former beau’s.” Hector smiled and shook his head. “Jimmy has a saying: ‘If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at who he gives it to.’ And anyway, that dump is just for one night. Jimmy tells me the Hollenden Hotel, on Superior Avenue, is quite nice.”

  “Very nice indeed,” Meg said. “Also very conspicuous.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  Her voice went a shade flat. “A time or two.”

  “Vito do a lot of business here in town?” That was a knife-twist of a transition, Hector knew.

  “In this town, yes,” Meg said, her breath trailing frost. “Hell, in every town. Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania. Even a bit of Canada, up around Windsor.” She gripped Hector’s arm a bit harder as her feet betrayed her. “Do you have even the remotest sense of what you’re up against, helping us?”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said. “Don’t you entertain any fears on that front. Have no qualms about Jimmy and I not grasping the scale of the danger.”

  “Then you’re just more the puzzlement if that’s so, Hector. I can’t decide if you’re crazy, a thrill-seeker, or just some kind of suicide case.”

  “And here we are.” Hector held the door for Meg. A couple of wolves gave her the eye as they slipped in from the cold. Hector figured he would have stared at her too—she had those kinds of looks. Patti Page on the jukebox: “Tennessee Waltz.”

  He helped Meg off with her coat. As he held her hand while she slid into the Naugehyde booth, a waiter drifted their way. Meg jacked a thumb at the cardboard advertisemen
t balanced on a chrome napkin holder, a promotional piece for White Rook sparkling water. “Some of that, please, with some white wine,” she said.

  Her order didn’t seem much of a drink to Hector. He ordered them both rum St. James, thinking of winters many years past and toying with trying to recapture some memory or two tied to all that. Twenties Paris was very much on his mind lately, for some reason.

  Meg said, “Shannon and I? It’s a closed subject, Hector. At least for now.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “But why exactly is that?”

  Meg bowed her head, tugging at her gloves. “Because I can’t afford for you to hate Katy. Not while you’re committed to seeing us through this thing.”

  Just like that, Hector of a sudden loathed the other woman. But he said, “Then I’ll respect your wishes on just that point. I won’t push. But only for a time. I can’t promise more than that.”

  She let a little smoke into her voice. “I appreciate it.”

  Their drinks came. They toasted, Hector resorting to one of Jimmy’s hoary Celtic cautions against strong drink: “Careful with that, Meg—it’ll go down your throat like a torchlight procession. At least for the first sip or two.”

  Johnny Otis began singing “Double Crossing Blues.” Meg held out her hand. “Give me some coins, would you, Hector? I want to improve the music.” At that moment, Hector allowed himself to think she was maybe a woman after his own heart.

  He muttered, “You sound like me,” and handed Meg some pocket change. He sat back in his chair and considered her voyage to the jukebox, savoring her sway. Hector watched her, and, hell, every man in the bar watched her, too, he noted. Meg seemed oblivious to the attention, or long beyond caring. What a sad thing for one so young and pretty if it was so, Hector thought.

  She slid back into the booth across from him, sloe-eyed. “I put in a few coins for you, too.”

  He arched a dark eyebrow. “You think you know my tastes in music?”

  “You’ll have to tell me how close I came.”

  Hector said, “Have you thought about what happens once this mess is over, Meg? I mean, once we get you two to Kefauver and he drains you of all that devastating information you offer?”