“Who’s he calling?”
Hector detected a new edge there in Katy’s voice. She kept looking back and forth between Meg and Hector, like she sensed some connection between them, now. Something going a good bit deeper than simple rumors of Hector’s tabloid-touted libido. So credit Kate some kind of harrowing intuition, Hector thought to himself.
“His partner is a bit older than Jim and looking toward retirement,” Hector said. “So Jimmy’s partner invests in property. Mostly rentals. Jim’s calling to see if he has a spare unit or two he can put us up in for a day or two. At least until we can make contact with Hoover or Kefauver directly. ’Til we can see about getting you a proper and reliable praetorian guard.”
“Holidays aren’t going to help with that effort,” Katy said.
“That’s the spirit,” Hector said. “Do try to hold fast to that hopeful outlook of yours, darlin’.”
Jimmy swung back into the Chevy, his cheeks and nose red. He rubbed his hands briskly together, then got the car in gear. “We’re in luck. We’ve got us a nice little brownstone three blocks from here, with attached garage. One unit, but two bedrooms, furnished. We can have it for a week, if it takes that long.”
Katy said, “And you truly trust this man?”
True ice in Jimmy’s tone: “Told you, I trust him with my life. He’s my partner.” Jimmy put it out there like that said it all. Softly he said to Hector, “That woman’s got a tongue on her that would clip a hedge.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hanrahan,” Meg said softly.
Jimmy smiled at Meg in the rearview mirror. “Jim,” he said. “Do please call me Jim.”
***
The women had their own room. Hector promised Jimmy the single bed in their room and vowed he’d take the couch.
Hector carried Shannon up to the bedroom from his car—the little girl never stirred.
Now the two old friends were sitting at the kitchen table, sipping spiked Sanka. Jimmy had turned on the radio to cover their talk. The Cleveland Orchestra was playing Christmas music. The orchestra wrapped up their Tchaikovsky tune and a commercial came on:
Mr. Jingeling
How you ting-a-ling
Keeper of the keys…
Hector spun a chair around and straddled it. “What now, Jimmy?”
“You said you know a Fed or two you trust, Hector.”
“That is to say, up to a certain point,” Hector said. “A little. And I’ll try and reach them tomorrow morning. But as Katy pointed out while you were calling your partner, it’s close to Christmas. Afraid D.C. is likely to be a ghost town about now. Senate’s on recess, and so the world is safe once again for democracy. But who knows where that damned Kefauver is? Toothy son of a bitch could be back in Tennessee, maybe holed up in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains somewhere. You have any ideas, Jim?”
“As it happens,” Jimmy said, “I do. I think we should reach out to Eliot.”
Hector almost sighed. He had to resist rolling his eyes. Eliot. Ness. Jimmy’s regard for the man ran so much higher than Hector’s own. But he couldn’t fault Jimmy. The cop knew Ness when the man was, by all accounts, more of a force to be reckoned with. And they’d probably shared plenty of their own tight spots.
Eliot and Hector? Not so much. But Hector just couldn’t hide his reaction to his friend’s suggestion. Jimmy grunted and said, “I know Eliot’s a long time out of the life, but he still has…you know, connections. And he might get us a line to Hoover quicker than anything we can come up with on our own. I want to see him tomorrow.”
A door clicked: Meg had taken off her heels. Her party dress was swiftly going from enticingly slinky to looking a shade too lived-in.
Hector said to her, “Kate being Kate, I figure she bolted with a roll of dough and can see to her and Shannon’s wardrobe. Have you got a trusted friend who could pack some stuff for you? I’ll get someone to pick up any suitcases. We could run the luggage through some paces that’ll fox anyone trying to follow your bags back to you.”
“I’ll make a call in the morning,” Meg said, closing the bedroom door behind her. She looked back at the door and said, “They’re out cold. Are our prospects looking any better? Please don’t lie, because candidly, I couldn’t bear it.”
“Sure,” Hector lied. “They’re much better. I’ll get my federal friends on the phone in the morning. We’re also going to pay a visit to a pal of Jimmy’s. You ever hear of Eliot Ness?”
“Eliot who?”
Jimmy’s cheeks reddened.
Hector said, “A famous treasury agent, but from before your time, kid. Eliot ran a detail in Chicago during Prohibition. Ness took on Al Capone and smashed his bootlegging business’ infrastructure. Eliot kept Big Al distracted so some bean-counters could build a tax beef against Capone. Later, Eliot became safety director of Cleveland, the youngest man in the country to hold such a post. The Cleveland police department was corrupt as a hell in the wicked Thirties. Ness fixed all that. Ness was formidable, a can-do sort. In Chicago, he and his squad had a reputation for incorruptibility. Couldn’t be bought off. They called him and his crew ‘the Untouchables.’ He’s a goddamn American hero.” Of course Hector said all that as much for Jimmy as for Meg. Hector’s current misgivings about Eliot aside, Ness had been formidable in the early going in Cleveland.
“Sounds like the kind of help we need,” Meg said.
Jimmy gave me a nod. “’Tis.” He stood and stretched and draped his suit jacket over the back of a kitchen chair. He shrugged off his shoulder holster, and swinging it in one hand, said, “Night, children. Please do not stay up too late. Tomorrow looks to be another frantic day.”
Hector nodded. “Night, Jim.” Jimmy waved over his shoulder and closed the bedroom door.
Meg sat down on the couch next to Hector. “I can tell I made your friend angry. I’m truly sorry for that.” She took his coffee mug from his hand and sipped some, then made a face.
“He’s just very touchy about Ness,” Hector said. “Eliot’s had some bad turns in recent years. He got picked up a few years ago for driving drunk and fleeing the scene of a fender-bender. That pretty much cost him his top cop post in Cleveland. Then, not too long ago at all, some folks talked Eliot into a run for mayor of Cleveland. The Republicans tried to get him to run for mayor in the 1930s. Back then, Ness would have well walked away with the race. But after that DUI? And he was too many years away from Cleveland when he finally agreed to make the political run. Eliot’s independent run for mayor was a debacle. He got trounced.”
Meg said softly, “So all that nice stuff you just said about this Ness was for Jim’s benefit, right?”
“Ness just made some bad decisions. Chose some wrong moments. As Jimmy once put it to me, Eliot was always in the field when luck was on the road.” Hector squeezed his neck and rolled his head side-to-side. “So much in this life is mere dumb timing, kiddo. Stuff you can’t plan to make happen in your favor or sway in any way at all. Eliot may yet have his time again. Maybe he’ll do that helping us. Hell, it could happen. Lord knows he’s long overdue for a break.”
“So Ness isn’t really going to be much help at all? Isn’t that the bottom line?”
“I aim to be pleasantly surprised.”
Meg nodded slow and deep. “We’re really up against it, aren’t we, Hector?”
“Been in better spots, but been in worse ones, too.” He smiled. “At least one of those was with Jimmy. Few years back, he and I tried to get another little girl to safety. She was being chased by same as the whole Nazi empire. We were running crazy across the width of France that time. This seems somehow easier.”
Meg searched his face. “And that time in France, how’d that come out?”
“You’re with both of us now, aren’t you? You seen any Nazis, lately?”
Meg gave him a knowing smile and took his hand. Her hand was warm and soft. “Honestly, Hector, why are you doing this? I don’t see any benefit in this for you. Nobody ever really plays Good Samaritan, not like this,
at least. Not against these sorts of odds.”
“Jim’s a cop, to the bone. A great one. Vito is a stain on Jimmy’s town. For him there’s no choice.”
“I get Hanrahan doing this, it’s his job, just as you say. But you’re… well, you’re just a writer.”
That almost hurt.
“Just?” Hector shrugged and said, “Maybe I’m just that thrill-seeker you were noodling about earlier.”
She brushed that stubborn comma of hair back from over his right eye. The damn thing was untamable, despite the ministrations of so many others, Brinke, Molly, Duff… too many more. None of ’em ever tamed that damn cowlick.
“I can’t sleep yet,” Meg said. “There’s that diner around the corner. Think we could go down there? Eggs-over-easy and some toast? Screwdrivers?”
“Be honest,” Hector said. “You’re just trying to stretch out the evening, aren’t you, Meg? Don’t want to be alone with your head in the sorry dark? Trying to distract yourself? You must have gathered by now, you can run from a lot of things, but never really from yourself.”
Meg said, “Sure, but… still…” A faltering smile. “I can try to dodge myself for a moment, here and there, right?”
Hector had been there. Hell, he’d been there a lot. He just gave her a sad smile.
“Suppose that’s it,” she said. “You’re right that I’m not really hungry.”
“There are so many better ways to distract ourselves,” Hector said. He pulled her close.
Meg drew back, nodded at the closed door. “What about Jimmy?”
He stroked the curve of her bottom lip with his index finger. “Of course, Jimmy went in there so we could be out here.”
9
Hector woke up very early, as he always did, rising well before dawn in order to write. He tried to slide out from under Meg, but she stirred. Seemed she was a very light sleeper. Or maybe he was losing his touch ’tween the sheets, Hector thought ruefully. Maybe his gift to exhaust a woman with passion, too, was going somewhere far away along with his ability to put a man down with a single punch as he reached his half-century mark.
Fifty: it didn’t feel so old, not really. But his twenty-five-year-old self still stubbornly lurking somewhere inside might argue that point.
Brushing hair from her face, Meg whispered, “What time is it?”
“About four, probably. My body clock always wakes me up about that time.”
“Your famous writing time,” she muttered, feeling around the floor for her dress. “I mean, I seem to remember that being so.”
God, but that freshly grated on Hector, this notion that he was known in advance to so many people—to so many women—known through news clippings and those crummy movie magazines because he’d courted a round-heels actress, here or there.
But Hector was also known to any who read them through his novels. He stood naked in his fiction, despite protests to the contrary. All of his desires and dreads were confided there in his books. All of his disappointments and dreams were tucked between those covers.
Of course, he had only himself to blame for that last. He’d chosen his profession.
No, that wasn’t true. Not really.
His craft had chosen him. Hector never believed he really had a choice about any of that. He was born to write and wrote to live. It all came together for him as a kid after a chance encounter with another writer, dying alone in the desert. The man who’d bequeathed him his precious Peacemaker.
But what had the trade cost him? Rarer and rarer was the time Hector met someone who got to know him through simple time spent together. That was the real rub: that too many came to the table with their notions of Hector firmly fixed by others before he really got to know them.
It was a sorry-ass way to live, sometimes. Now Meg was looking to be another of those who had ideas about Hector.
His eyes were already dark-adjusted. He scooped up her dress and handed it to the pale-skinned, platinum blonde. He decided to confirm his worst suspicions. “How do you know about my writing time?”
“It was in that Movie Fan Magazine article.” Meg smiled and kissed his cheek. “Going to try and get a little more sleep.” She padded over to the bedroom door, whispered, “Good luck with your typewriter.”
Hector waited until the door clicked shut, then dressed and whipped up some instant coffee. He didn’t want to wake anyone with the clatter of his portable Royal typewriter, so he got out a notepad, opened the kitchen window shade to let in a little street light, then set to it with a pen.
It was like he’d told Jimmy: Hector had turned over two books in New York on a new contract. His publisher already had three others awaiting publication. But that didn’t mean Hector could afford not to write. Not in terms of the condition of his own head.
Hector had been in a kind of recent belle époque: feverishly producing something like four sixty to seventy thousand-word manuscripts a year, each of the past twelve months. He was stockpiling so much material his editor and his agent were both trying to persuade Hector to adopt a penname or even two—to pull a Cornell Woolrich and become his own pseudonymous cottage industry.
Despite his recent prolific period, Hector had not even a flicker of a story speaking to him at the moment, so for no particular reason he wrote “Better Angels” at the top of the page and started in on an account of what was happening with the two women.
In his first draft, Jimmy was “Danny Kennedy.” Hector was “Jack Linder.” Hector let Meg keep her own first name.
About six, there was a tug at his sleeve, pulling Hector back into the real world from the more enticing one he was constructing.
He was so deep into his writing he’d never heard the little girl’s approach and so was momentarily startled.
Shannon stood there, bleary-eyed, still in her little party dress.
One tiny knuckle ground at a blue eye filled with sleep; her other arm was wrapped around her dolly.
She said, “My tummy’s hungry.” On cue, there was an impressive stomach growl and Shannon winced a little. She pressed a stubby-fingered hand to her belly. Something in the moment pierced Hector.
He closed his notebook. “I’ll leave a note for the others,” he said. “Go fetch your shoes and coat and we’ll get us a hot breakfast. Right-o?”
Shannon beamed. “Right-o!”
***
The sidewalk looked treacherous, so Hector carried Shannon in arms to the diner.
They ducked into the eatery from the cold and Hector stomped slush from his boots. Grinning, Shannon stomped her own dry feet after he set her down.
Because they were the morning’s first customers, they had the run of the place. Shannon selected a wraparound booth, hard up against the radiator. It was very cozy, but shrugging off some strange chill, Hector said, “How do you like your eggs, kiddo?”
“Scrambled.”
“Me too.” He ordered those, some sausages and bacon, plenty of toast, a flask of coffee for himself and chocolate milk for the little girl. As he ordered, Shannon sat flipping through the selections in the little chrome jukebox mounted on the wall above their table. He handed her a coin. Hector doubted she could read much yet, so God only knew what tune would issue from the little music box.
They ended up with Sinatra, a seasonal cover of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”
Shannon bounced her legs under the table, occasionally accidently kicking Hector in the shin with her high-gloss, patent leather shoe. He took it cheerfully, ever the hard case. He nodded to Francis’ Christmas tune. Sinatra sang it beautifully, eventually even reaching Hector on this lonely, encroaching Christmas.
Shannon said suddenly, “Are you a daddy?”
“No,” Hector said, shaking his head. “Afraid I’m not.”
“Oh.” A beat. “So that makes you sad?”
Hector wet his lips. He said, “Doesn’t faze me. What’s your daddy like?”
“He works a lot.”
“So you don’t see
him much?”
“Hardly ever.”
Call me a bastard, Hector thought. He asked, “So you don’t miss your pap much, then?”
Shannon shrugged. When she did that, something in the way she moved reminded him of Meg.
While they waited, Hector unfolded a napkin and gave it to her along with one of his pencils. Shannon promptly set to drawing on the napkin.
This voice: “How dare you leave with her?”
It was Katy, of course, and all anger.
Hector waved a hand. “Kid was starving as kids are wont to do. Hunger pangs you could read on her face. And I left a note, hence you being here. Take a load off, Kate. I’ll buy you some eggs.”
Kate scowled but slid into the booth next to Shannon and began fussing with the little girl’s hair. “You’re a mess,” she said to Shannon.
Hector almost said, “Looked in a mirror this morning?” Instead, he pulled from behind the napkin dispenser a menu sticky with old syrup and passed it across the Formica tabletop. “Make your selection now and you might not have to sit there and watch Shannon and I eat.”
Katy did that. When the waitress left them, she said, “Someone came in very late this morning.”
“Don’t make something of it,” Hector said. “Meg couldn’t sleep and I wouldn’t go out in the cold for another drink. So we sat up, talking.” He waited a beat, then said, “Mostly about me if it matters.” Hector figured she’d figure him for that kind of narcissist. Hell, the movie mags said it was so. Nearly every woman who knew him first through his books thought it so. Those women often even spoke to him in echoes of dialogue Hector had put into the mouths of the femmes fatales in his books. Or they spoke in echoes of the voices of the better and all-too-real women Hector had immortalized between the pages of his novels.
All of those sorry lines between fantasy and reality just seemed to get fuzzier as the years ground on. And hell, what writer wasn’t a narcissist, at base—a kind of artistically inclined sociopath? Every fiction writer he’d known was the same—always outside the moment, living in their head.
Katy smirked. “Playing truth or dare, were you? I mean, as Meg came in late, carrying her dress.”
The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 6