“You mean if you get us there.”
“If. When. Either way, what happens to you when the pressure is off?”
Meg sighed. “That’s just a clever way of leading me back around to talking about Shannon and I, isn’t it, Hector?”
He hadn’t meant the question that way, but she was right—he’d staggered into a line of interrogation. He reckoned he could be unconsciously stubborn that way.
Anyway Hector figured it, as long as they were ducking and dodging, Meg maintained her tie to her little girl.
But what would happen once any threat was removed?
Hector didn’t see Katy and Meg setting up housekeeping in some Canadian or Mexican backwater and splitting parenting responsibilities for that little blond-haired girl.
He saw no prospect for “happily ever after” for Meg and Shannon.
“I really didn’t mean to press,” he said, feeling the ogre. “I truly didn’t, Megan.”
Meg gave him a long look. “I believe you, Hector. Blue eyes don’t hide much.”
That assertion set Hector back on his heels. It was a line from one of his novels. Meg said, “And you have very blue eyes, Hector. Took me a bit to make the connection. I’ve read a few of your novels and I liked them a great deal. I’ve seen some of the movies you’ve scripted. Read a profile of you in Movie Fan Magazine a month or so ago. ‘The man who lives what he writes and writes what he lives.’ That was the headline.” A long pause, then, “There was a lot in that article about you being a skirt-chaser, or ladies-man, too.”
“Slander stuff.” Hector took a shot of his fiery rum. “Studio public relations bullshit.” He said it through the booze’s burn.
“Maybe some.” Meg smiled. “But the life you’ve led, the risks you’ve taken? All the theaters of war and the revolutions you’ve raced into according to that article? You’re still standing and looking not the much worse for wear. I mean, you look… I don’t know, almost, boyish. Game for anything. You’ve got the kind of reputation and charisma that might give a girl some crazy kind of hope.” Meg smiled. “I mean, if I wasn’t such a cynic.”
“It’s safe enough for you to hope,” Hector said. “Even to believe in the two of us, I mean. If I blow it, Jimmy won’t. In all the world, he’s the one I’d most want to have my back in a scrape like this.”
“You’ve known James a long time?”
“Since before you were born, I’d guess.” Now that was a stupid way to put it, he thought.
“How old do you think I am?”
“Maybe twenty-two. But an old soul.” That last was a bit disingenuous on Hector’s part. Meg struck him as somewhat less than worldly, despite some of the lamentable varnish she’d acquired in her relatively short life.
“Your math is close enough,” Meg said.
“You’re certainly younger than Kate.”
This look. “Mistresses are always younger than the wives, aren’t they?”
“Touché.”
“I was watching you two through the window of the diner,” Meg said. “James and you both looked very serious, Hector. And Hanrahan? He looked badly shaken. Don’t lie. What’s happened?”
“You shouldn’t read so much into Jimmy’s expressions and the like,” Hector said, trying for a dodge. “He revels in all that Irish cynicism. Claims he has an abiding sense of tragedy that sustains him through temporary periods of joy.”
Meg wasn’t having it; she pressed. “What’s already gone wrong, Hector?”
He thought about it, sipping more of drink and savoring the way it warmed his gut. He impulsively decided he trusted Meg, and couldn’t put much by her anyway, even if he didn’t. She already seemed adept enough at reading him. He said, “We’ve lost some potentially valuable allies it seems.”
“What allies?”
“The Cleveland police force.”
Meg looked stricken. “All of it?”
“Enough of it to make picking and choosing potential partners too treacherous to try. Your former friend, Vito, his reach is long and very deep. Limitless blood money can do that.” Then he thought, You sure know how to pick ’em, Meg.
“No revelation there. It’s like what you said about God and money.” She sipped her water-weakened wine. Meg made a face at her drink. “This isn’t going to get me there.”
“It isn’t going to get you where?”
“It isn’t going to get me to that place where I’m numb. Closer to beyond caring.”
“Then bottoms up.” Hector passed her the rest of his cocktail and held up two fingers for reinforcements. The waiter saw, nodded. Hector noticed Meg’s lipstick on his glass. It made Hector want to kiss her, to taste her pouty mouth, softly bite her bee-stung bottom lip. He said, “We’re not beat yet, Meg. Not even close. We’ll see you all through this, I swear.”
She smiled and briefly laid her hand over Hector’s. “You are some kind of crazy, Hector Lassiter. You and your Irish friend.” She smiled, shaking her head. “That sometimes accent of yours, am I right that you come from Texas?”
“That’s right. Galveston. I hear some Missouri in your accent. Don’t look at me like that—it’s nearly ground out, but I catch flickers.”
“You called it,” she said tucking hair behind an ear. “From around Moberly, or thereabouts.” Hank Williams on the jukebox now, “Long Gone Lonesome Blues”.
Hector said, “So you think this tune is to my tastes?”
Meg shook her head. “I played this one for me. The next one is yours.”
His song came around eventually, a cover of “I’ve Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good)” given a mild Texas Swing treatment. A few couples took to the smallish dance floor. Meg slid out of the booth and offered Hector a hand. “C’mon, cowboy, dance with me. I’m finally feeling the liquor. Might just be able to forget for a dance or two how sorry and hopeless our situation probably is.”
Situation? That was a fifty-cent word for what they all faced.
Still, they danced to that tune. That one, as well as “You Took Advantage of Me”… “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” “After You’ve Gone” and “Exactly like You.”
Someone behind Meg had dropped coin for Bing Cosby’s “White Christmas.” They danced to that one too, Meg draped around Hector, hanging on him, more like, at the end. She was clearly more than a bit blitzed by the rum.
She said, “Holiday plans, Hector? Hate to have all this cost you Christmas with some comely honey back in New Mexico. That’s where that article said you live now if I remember it rightly.” Meg’s Missouri accent was coming through thicker now. “Any big New Year’s Eve plans, Tex?”
“Depends,” Hector said, deciding to let a little more Gulf Coast and Galveston into his own tones. “You have any notions about maybe headin’ south for the New Year? Maybe flirtin’ with being a Snow Bird? I’ve got a little place in Key West I’m still holdin’ onto.”
She gave him a knowing smirk. It was there in her eyes; maybe because it had been in his eyes for so long, he figured.
Hector took a chance and leaned in close. Meg smiled and closed her eyes, tipping her face toward his. Her lips tasted of rum, catsup and coffee. Her tongue was suddenly there in his mouth, and now there was the taste of white wine, too.
Slowly opening her eyes, Meg, a little breathy, said, “Thanks again for everything you’re trying to do for us. Please tell your friend how grateful I am.”
“You can do that yourself,” Hector said, “but just don’t kiss him like this when you do that.”
Hector leaned back in, found her mouth.
***
They kissed a last time in the parking lot, clinging to one another under the light above her hotel room’s door. Hector coaxed her to the door of the room that he and Jim were sharing. “You can use the connecting door,” he said, fumbling with the lock, his fingers stiff from the cold.
Her hand was suddenly at the small of his back. “Hector, that gray Olds from before is sitting across the parking lot. I
can see two men inside.”
Son of a bitch.
Meg said, “How’d they find us again?”
“Sometimes FBI work in trailing teams,” Hector said. “Didn’t think to look for another car, or perhaps even two. But there must have been, and they must have switched off again for the graveyard shift. There’ll likely only be one car watching us now. They’ll figure we’re bedding down for the night.”
“How do you know all of this, Hector?”
“Sometimes my life seems eternally confounded by the goddamn Bureau and old J. Edgar,” he said. “Swear that sometimes I can’t swing a dead cat without smackin’ the head of some Hoover stooge. Either way, I know their moves.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Go and get everyone packing to leave, pronto. Tell Jimmy what’s up. Tell him to join me outside in six or seven minutes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m thinking about going and talking to them.”
“What?”
“Really—I’ve decided it’s time for a conversation. What Jimmy might call a colloquy.”
Meg’s eyes widened. “Is that wise?”
“Guess we’ll see, directly.”
“Just talk?”
Hector shrugged. “At least at first.”
7
Hector made a show of lighting a cigarette while looking around for a burst of inspiration. A vending machine glowed in a lighted alcove about twenty yards from their motel rooms. A water spigot jutted out of the wall next to the soda pop machine. On the ground near the spigot lay a length of coiled garden hose.
The Olds was maybe twenty yards behind Hector; he reckoned the hose looked long enough.
He bent down as if to tie his shoelace, his back between the Olds and the water spigot. Hector threaded the end of the hose onto the spigot, then tried the handle. It finally gave with a groan. Water began to trickle from the end of the hose. Hector turned the spigot off again. For cover, he dug out some change and then bought a bottle of Orange Crush, popping the lid off on the opener on the side of the machine. Steam rose from the lip of the soda bottle.
A vagrant was wandering the parking lot, leaning on the hoods of cars a row behind the Feds. The juicer looked to be struggling to stay upright against the slick pavement and a profound state of drunkenness.
Hector walked out to meet the vagrant, knowing the Feds were watching closely. The snow was picking up and visibility dropping. Hector called, “Hey there, old pal!”
The wino turned and grinned. There were more teeth missing than left in his head. He had rheumy eyes, wet from the cold. His back to the Olds, Hector pulled out his roll and shucked off a ten-dollar bill. “Hamilton is yours,” he said to the vagrant. “All you have to do is walk up to that gray Olds there and tap on the window. Make a nuisance of yourself. It’s a gag on some friends.”
The old juicer’s brow wrinkled. Dubious: “Yeah? Make a nuisance? Then what? Then what happens to your friends?”
“Nothing. You just be persistent until I send you on your way. Just get ’em to roll a window down. Passenger side would be best. Once that window goes down, you just walk away.”
“Do just that for ten bucks?”
“You do just that for ten bucks.” The bottle of soda was cold in Hector’ hand. “Say yes now, and I’ll throw in a bottle of Orange Crush.”
The juicer grinned his gummy grin. “Hell, I’ll do it.”
“Then do it right now, old sport.”
The snow was falling harder, starting to freshly accumulate. There were big, wind-driven flakes twirling down. Hector shook some snow from his hat and brushed more off his shoulders. Then he crouched down behind a Buick, staying low and making his way back to where the Olds sat parked.
The old wino was banging on the passenger side window of the Olds and yelling. The man in the passenger seat was yelling back at the juicer. The old man kept a hand cocked at his ear, like some demented and deaf duffer.
The Fed finally rolled down the window. Hector heard him say in a loud voice, “All right pops, I’m going to give you two dollars, then you go the hell away.”
The wino said, “Bless you, brother.” When he went to reach for the bills, the juicer accidentally dropped his bottle of Orange Crush. It bounced off the window and tumbled into the Fed’s lap. The G-man yelled, “Shit!” then, “Stupid rummy dumbass!”
The old wino backed away with his dollar bills, feet slipping and sliding on the ice.
Hector sidled up and put his Colt to the Fed’s ear and cocked the big old Peacemaker. “Easy there, amigo.”
“You just put your feet in deep shit, Lassiter,” the driver said.
“Wouldn’t be the first, nor likely the last time,” Hector said. “You boys get your guns out now, ’tween thumbs and forefingers. Then you reach over your shoulders and drop the rods behind the front seat.”
The driver said, “Screw you, Lassiter! We’re FBI!”
“Big so what? I’m the hombre with a gun to your partner’s noggin’. Roomy as I suspect it is in there, a head shot is not something your buddy’s going to bounce back from, righto? With this weather, there’s also no prospect of anybody identifying me later as the shooter if you piss me off more than you already have.”
The guns went over the seat. Hector figured his inter-Bureau reputation preceded him.
Jimmy stepped up alongside me then. He had his own gun, a forty-five, out. “What have we caught ourselves, Hector?”
“Just about to ask these boys for identifications,” I said. “But I think we already know.”
Jimmy pointed his gun at the driver’s crotch. “Let’s have those wallets, lads. We’re not going to waste time here, or even pursue the possibility, that you’re both likely bought-out sons of bitches on the pad for that Dago Youngstown hoodlum Vito Scartelli. But we will have your wallets, boyos.”
Hector said, “Everybody almost ready to roll, Jimmy?”
“Ready when you are, Hector. Lasses are finishing loading the car now.”
“You’ve got these two in hand, then?”
“I can handle ’em,” Jimmy said. “These are barely fit to mind mice at a crossroads.” He tossed Hector the car keys. “Couldn’t bring myself to trust the ladies with those yet. Shame on me for being the suspicious sort. I sincerely rue that sad quality in myself. Something else to add to my catalogue of character flaws.”
Hector said, “These boys’ guns are on the floorboards behind the front seat.”
“I’ll retrieve them,” Jimmy said.
“Then I’ll be back in a minute,” Hector said.
On the way to fetch the garden hose, Hector stopped by his Chevy. He said to Meg, “This is a gesture of trust.” He handed her his car keys. “Keep that little darlin’ warm. We’ll be leaving in about three minutes.”
He scooped up the garden hose and turned the water all the way up.
The temperature was well below freezing, but with the wind off the lake Hector guessed it was probably closer to single digits, it surely felt that way. He turned the hose’s spray on the Olds’ windshield and let the ice begin to build up across the windscreen, maybe a solid quarter-inch of it forming on the driver’s side in just a few seconds. It would take nearly a half-an-hour to hack-away-at and scrape off all that ice.
After he had a good veneer of ice covering the windshield, Hector went to work on the door hinges, seams and car door locks. The Fed on the passenger side of the car yelled, “Please don’t do this! We’ll be trapped in here. We’ll never live it down. You’re shaming us.”
“Better put that window up,” Hector hollered back, moving around to that agent’s side of the car. Jimmy, grinning said, “This is pretty cruel, Hec. They’ll be made for major assholes by their Hoover chums. They are indeed FBI, by the by. Wonder how long it will be until they figure a way out of that car?”
“Hell, they can simply kick out the windows once they think of it,” Hector said. “Got their guns?”
&
nbsp; “Got those, and their IDs.”
Hector fished out his pocketknife. “I don’t know, Jimmy. These two seem somewhat crafty. Better take the stems off at least a couple of their tires. Figure even Feds don’t carry extra spare tires.”
The passenger side window wasn’t quite rolled up all the way; the agent on that side was still screaming obscenities at Hector when he wasn’t imploring Jimmy and Hector to give them back their guns and IDs. Losing those would put them in deep Dutch with Hoover of course.
Hector hesitated for about half-a-second, then thrust the hose through the window crack. He savored the ensuing screams.
8
It was Jimmy’s town, so Hector rode shotgun.
They stayed to backstreets and carefully made their way downtown.
The city’s skyline was a flickering haze through the falling snow. Through that sheer white curtain, there was just the hint of the lights of the Terminal Tower poking through the pale gloom now and again to assure them the landmark skyscraper still stood.
Meg said, “What’s the plan, boys?” Hector looked back over his shoulder at her. Shannon was asleep, stretched out, her head on Katy’s lap and her legs resting on Meg’s thighs. Passing streetlights caressed Meg’s face. Megan had taken off one glove and was stroking Shannon’s skinny little leg.
“Hotels are out now,” Jimmy said, voice sound hoarse from fatigue. “Too easy to be found out in those. So I want to make a phone call.” He palmed over to the curb in front of Halle Brothers Department Store. The store’s various windows were decorated with gaudy little displays depicting Christmas in other countries. Hector was almost tempted to wake Shannon and show them to the little girl, but she needed her sleep. And anyway, it was so bitterly cold.
Jimmy said, “Wait here.” He trotted across the icy sidewalk to a phone booth. He closed himself inside and a light came on overhead inside the booth. The phone booth was iced over on one side and slush splashed up from the curbstones stained the street-side of the phone booth.
The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 5