The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  ***

  If Hector had known then what he would come to know later about the bounty hunter Tomás Hawk, he might have guzzled black coffee and popped amphetamines—spurring himself south and over the border into a non-stop drive for southern Mexico.

  But he didn’t know any of that yet, so they tarried there along that other border.

  ***

  Shannon sat playing on the floor with her female puppy that she still insisted upon calling Hector.

  From time to time, the little girl would put questions to the writer about death and what happens after. Hector told her all the things others believed and seemed to draw comfort from. He painted heaven as some big floating party-cum-reunion. Though he thought he knew better then, some part of Hector hoped it somehow true. Hell, there were plenty he’d dearly love to see again.

  When Shannon finally fell asleep, the puppy curled in its box on the floor by her side, Hector coached Meg for the phone call she was to place to her mother.

  “Keep it short,” Hector said. “Don’t say anything that’ll give away our location. If pressed, make it sound like we’re in the Dakotas or the like. Or maybe as though we’re making a run for Canada. See if your mother sounds natural, or if she maybe doesn’t sound coerced. See if she sounds friendly and warm and therefore maybe receptive to putting us up for a few days when we surprise her.”

  ***

  Hector’s arm was improving and Meg was getting around better on her cane. He decided to risk spending one more night at the motor court to catch up on sleep and give their wounds that extra day to heal. He ordered in some pizza and soda pops for dinner. After their meal, while Meg gave Shannon a bath, he called Jimmy at the next of his favored bars.

  “I suppose he tells me all this to scare me,” Jimmy said, jumping right in.

  Hector said, “He who? And he tells you what to scare you?”

  “I mean Gibson, Hec. I suppose he hopes to scare me into scaring you into turning yourself and the woman in.”

  “What’s Gibson saying to terrify us, Jimmy?”

  “The good attorney claims J. Edgar has shared transcripts of phone conversations taped of Great Lakes region mob-types regarding you and Meg. The boyos seem to think seeing Meg and the tyke dead is the most expedient of their options.”

  Hector snorted. “Options? They have options? What’s the alternative to killing the girls?”

  “That would be the prospect of killing Vito themselves,” Jimmy said. “But Gibson discounts that as a serious consideration. He swears we’ll never see it exercised.”

  “Why not?”

  “Gibson’s assessment is the boyos don’t grasp the extent of Vito’s mental degeneration. At least as it’s claimed to be worsening by Meg and by poor Kate. Seems these lads also have arcane rules, folkways and tropes within their bloody little boys club. They carried all these quaint customs over from the Old Country that Gibson says precludes them ever seriously attempting some kind of coup d’état.”

  “All of that’s interesting to a mob aficionado maybe,” Hector said, “but frankly there’s not much new in there to terrify me. No bracing revelations buddy.”

  “Perhaps not, viewed in a certain light,” Jimmy said. “But before it was just Vito throwing resources at getting you. Now the other boys, if this taped chatter is to be believed, have thrown in after you, too.”

  “Grand, as you would say,” Hector said. Looking for the silver lining, he said, “Tell me, Jimbo, the mob have much presence out here in the sticks? I mean, I always thought of them as more of an east coast and west coast, urban phenomenon.”

  “I don’t think they’re as organized out there in the heartland, no,” Jimmy said. “That’s why they have these Pinkerton cast-offs, I suppose. Those losers know no boundaries, near as I can tell. Maybe they’re actually worse than the real Pinkertons, if you can conceive of that. I mean that in every sense, Hector. These are feckin’ thugs of the first water.”

  “Don’t need to warn me—those thugs’ reputation is too well-known to me. Too bad there’s not some labor strike they could focus on instead of us, the bloody sons of bitches.”

  Jimmy said, “That’s one good thing if you’d have been able to make a stand here in the Buckeye State. Ohio passed a law years ago banning the Pickertons from operation here. Seems some long-dead Ohio politicians feared the Pinkertons could conceivably become their own standing army. They are a near legion, after all.”

  “I had heard that, and you’re still not helping my morale,” Hector said.

  “And then there’s the bounty hunter,” Jimmy persisted.

  “You have any more on him that might be useful?”

  “Afraid not, Hec. Man’s a cipher. Part of his mystique is being a blank, I suppose. It’s something he cultivates. He plays it very mysterious.”

  Hector grunted, said, “Any good news?”

  “It’s the twenty-eighth of December,” Jimmy said. “A Thursday. I don’t work weekends. Get yourself through tomorrow night and I can see about getting back with you around New Year’s Eve—Sunday night. I’ve already put in for vacation starting Tuesday the second.”

  “Really sure you want to buy a ticket back into this mess?”

  “Of course,” Jimmy said. “And it’s an investment in my quality of life back here. Hell, must be some reward for toppling the Buckeye don in terms of a cleaner Cleveland for us cops.”

  “Maybe,” Hector said. “But I suspect the Mafia, like nature, abhors a vacuum.”

  “Perhaps. But God willing, maybe the next boyo will have both oars in the water.”

  “Well, I’d surely love to have you back here at my side, Jimmy.”

  “We’ll talk again tomorrow night. Stay alive, Hec.”

  “I always seem to manage at least that,” Hector said. “That’s me—a survivor, often despite myself.”

  “So don’t going changing your ways this late in life.”

  Jimmy broke the connection. Hector was about to hang up when he heard a second click on the line.

  He cursed and racked the receiver.

  30

  Megan’s mother lived in a careworn farmhouse far from any main roads.

  Fact was, they had to follow such a stubborn tangle of unnamed, twisting, branching dirt and gravel paths Hector doubted he could find his way back to a main road with a compass and a full tank of gas.

  He was consequently heartened any would-be pursuers would be at least equally flummoxed if they came looking for them.

  Meg said, “Sadly, this is almost nicer than the house I grew up in. Cows… sheep and some crops. That’s what makes mother’s living.” Meg said it with some disdain.

  Shannon, whom Hector sensed had never been outside the city, sat stroking her puppy, looking around with eager eyes. She smiled and said, “Hector is going to love this place.”

  A lone tallish woman stepped out onto the porch, pulling a hand-knitted shawl closer around her shoulders as they rolled to a stop in front of the old weather-washed white clapboard house.

  Meg rolled down the window and called out to the woman. Meg’s mother stepped down from the porch and leaned into the window, one hand on the door of Hector’s Chevy. The woman kept her nails very short. Hers were strong, working hands.

  She leaned in and kissed Meg on the cheek. The woman said to her pretty daughter, “Just look at you—dressed all sophisticated and the like. Like a cinema star, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Meg said, clearly uncomfortable.

  “I thought you might be coming,” Meg’s mother said. “We don’t have the television of course, but we’ve got the radio now.” She pointed to an aluminum antenna that towered over the house. “And we have that radio, too—a ham rig your brother put in. You can talk across three states some nights with that monstrosity if the wind is running right.”

  The woman looked enough like Meg that Hector could have picked her out as such in a crowd. Still pretty. Her hair was white-blond like Meg’s but
shot through with a few stray strands of silver. Her nose and cheeks were freckled from the sun. She had laugh lines Hector liked. And she carried her Missouri accent unselfconsciously.

  Where her daughter was dewy and lissome, the mother was attractive in an earthy, charismatic way. Some real presence there. Maybe that was all born of self-reliance and a kind of realist’s bravado. Something else, too, something that burned brightly inside.

  Either way, Meg’s mother was surely attractive. And she wasn’t at all what Hector expected.

  Meg’s mother said to him, “You can unload the car here, mister. There’s a barn out back. You best hide your ride in there. There are a few other old cars already stashed inside. Park amongst those and pull a tarp off one of the junkers. Do please cover up that hi-tone car of yours. Neighbors will have seen you drive in and will surely have taken notice of such a car. Afraid some of them might even talk to those who may come looking for you.”

  ***

  Hector closed up the doors to the barn, struggling with his bum arm against a stiff wind that tore at the rickety door. He got a splinter in his good hand for his trouble.

  Snow flurries were beginning to kick up. The sky was dark gray and the cloud ceiling pressing low to the ground, increasingly ominous looking. Hector wandered across the wind-combed field, that wind whipping at his graying brown hair and making his eyes tear up. He stepped up onto the porch and stomped snow from his boots then let myself in. He secured the screen door with a catch-and-eye hook and locked the storm door. He had to force the latter closed against the gusting press of that wicked wind. It was some nasty front shearing down from Canada across the Plains.

  “Storm’s coming hard, wouldn’t you say,” Meg’s mother said behind him.

  Hector smiled. “Which radio said that?”

  “I said it,” the elder woman said.

  “I just felt it,” he said. Holding out his working hand, he said, “I’m Hector Lassiter.”

  The woman shook his hand once in a downward jerk. She had a good grip, but her hands were rough and callused. “Hallie Dalton. Thank you for all you’ve done to protect my daughter and grandchild. They’re cleaning up, by the way.” He winced as she pressed at the splinter in his hand.

  Hallie frowned at the blood on her palm and turned his hand over to inspect it. She said, “Let me see to that.” She shook her head. “Gee, that’s in pretty deep. Must smart like crazy.”

  His still gripped by her hand, Hector said, “How much do you know about what’s been going on?”

  “I expect I know all of it, now,” Hallie said. “Including the fact you haven’t known Meg for long at all. Not long enough to be a party to the mess she’s made of her life. That makes you more the hero in my eyes.”

  Hallie took his good arm and led him over to a nook in the wall above an upright piano. On the shelves were a few knick-knacks, some pieces of antique glass and a few well-read books. He saw two paperbacks with his name on the creased spines. “I don’t have much use for the motion pictures, and there aren’t many opportunities around these parts if they did interest me, but I do like to read,” Hallie said. “You write very good books. You write about people with real urges and feet of clay. People I can care about, who frustrate me, yet who I believe in.”

  Just like that, Hector wished she could be one of his critics. She said, “Have you written more books than those two?”

  “A few,” he said, lowballing. “I’ll see a box of them is sent you when all this is done.”

  “No, I couldn’t pay for them.”

  “My gift to you, for putting me up.”

  “You’re here with Megan. No payment needed.”

  “Call the books a belated Christmas present, then. A simple gesture.”

  “I surely hope some of your good rubs off on my daughter,” Hallie said, smiling. He liked her smile. “Now let’s see to that hand before it infects or festers,” she said.

  ***

  He bit his lip through the burn as Hallie spread some Merthiolate over the place where the surprisingly long, thick splinter had resided, then secured a bandage over the wound. She patted the back of his hand and said, “All set.”

  “Thanks a million.” The sound of water splashing in the bath.

  Studying his face, she said, “As you’ve no doubt gathered by now, Megan could use more sand. And solid grounding.” It was pretty clear from her expression Hallie Dalton was sizing Hector up, calculating how much of either quality he might provide her daughter by example.

  Hector just shook his head and said, “I may not be the best candidate for all that. I mean, you’ve read some of my books. I’d like to say my imagination was that big, but…”

  Hallie waved a hand. “Please. You’re capable and intrepid. A headstrong rambler. I can tell that already. A maverick and a rover, like you write about in your books. Yet you’re the kind that doesn’t just let the gale of the world push him around. You go where you want. Am I right?”

  Refute that? How could he dare? He smiled and said, “Right. That’s me all over.”

  ***

  Meg and Shannon were bedding down in a guestroom together. Hallie had hauled out some old footlocker full of Megan’s childhood books and dolls for her granddaughter’s amusement. Meg was presently reading fairytales to Shannon.

  Hallie and Hector sat at the kitchen table sipping coffee and playing 500-rum.

  “Megan was going to be a singer,” Hallie said. “Even as the littlest thing, at four or five, she insisted that was what she was going to do with her life. And Meg has the voice and the looks, obviously. Reason why we have the piano in the other room, there. Saved and saved and got it from the Penny’s catalogue. When she left a few years ago, her plan was to go to New York and sing in cabarets. Make some connections in the Big Apple and get a recordin’ contract. So how did she end up in Ohio, with child by that gangster?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Hector said. “Our lives goes sideways, sometimes. You know that.”

  “That I surely do. At our age, we both do, yes? You want some bourbon, Hector?”

  “That would be real nice,” he said.

  Hallie rose and opened a big old mahogany cabinet. She stood on tiptoe, reaching up to the top shelf. Hector watched her. Hallie’s cotton dress was simple but seemed almost tailored. She was slender yet still had enticing curves. Hector tamped down some urges, shaking his head. After all, he was sleeping with her daughter. Jesus, but I have me some sorry drives, he thought.

  Hallie smiled and smacked down a couple of cut crystal glasses and a matching decanter. “Dave, Megan’s father, enjoyed a drink every night, and I did, too, but I’m not going to become one of those solitary drinkers,” Hallie said. “Don’t want to be some gin-soaked widow.”

  “Well, you’ve got yourself a world-class drinking partner tonight,” Hector said. “And you’ve got some time to make up for, Hallie. So let’s splash that main brace.”

  Hector poured them both a couple of fingers of bourbon and they tapped glasses.

  Smooth yet fiery stuff.

  Feeling the liquor spread out to warm his belly, he said, “How long has Dave been gone?” Remembering things Megan had said here and there he was guessing about five years.

  “Too long,” Hallie said. “He’d have been fifty-one in two weeks.”

  Ouch. Hector was just a shade younger than Megan’s old man. All his women seemed to get younger, just as Jimmy had pointed out, but this time Hector was actually starting to feel a tad uncomfortable about all that. And it suddenly occurred to Hector that Hallie and he were near peers. He figured her for her late forties.

  “She’s sure made a mess of it all for herself this time,” Hallie said. “I’ve tried to teach her how one decision can change the whole of a life. Tried to impress upon her actions have consequences. Not sure those lessons ever took. Pretty sure in fact that they didn’t.”

  “Some never learn those simple things,” Hector said. Hell, he figured he was probably a c
ontender in those same sorry stakes, at least in the eyes of some. Too often heedless of likely outcomes—that had sometimes been Hector.

  Hallie said, “You think you can really get them through this?”

  “I mean to try to see them to safety. And I’ve got some help, some more-than-capable friends here and there who may prove useful. One of them may hook up with us again in a few days. We could make it.” He could tell from her expression he didn’t sound confident enough.

  Hallie said, “Mexico? That’s where Megan said she thought you meant to take them.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “She can’t conceivably try and go through American courts to claim custody of Shannon, not even if Vito Scartelli and all his legions disappeared an hour from yesterday. Down there, south of the border, they can better reinvent themselves. They can maybe get lost out there in places most gringos don’t even know exist. Out where there are no courts to cope with. And, hell, who knows—ten, fifteen years on, maybe they can come back. There’s a bounty hunter after us, too, a nasty piece of work by all accounts. But he can’t pull anyone out of Mexico. They’d hand him his head if he tried. That would leave only these former Pinkertons to chase us, and south of the border, those low bastards will tend to stand out. They’d draw themselves other flavors of grief that should soon convince ’em the job just ain’t worth it.”

  “Why are you really doing this, Hector?”

  He traced the rim of his glass with a finger. “Did Megan describe how we met?”

  “She did. Told me nearly everything, I expect.”

  “Well, it’s been like that, over and over,” he said, blushing. That was something pretty unfamiliar. “Always one more crisis and one more thing to see them through, over and over. I haven’t had the time to take a breath and have a think in order to sensibly opt out of this mess. Which any son of a bitch with any sand at all would have done at least two gunfights ago.”

  Hallie smiled sadly. Something in it reached him. “The way you put things?” She sighed and said, “With Meg, well, frankly, there may always be one more thing, Hec. She has a talent for findin’ trouble. Or maybe for helping trouble find her. Either way, it ends the same. It’s not just bad luck. I hope you understand that. Our three boys have never been much of a problem. Not Meg’s older sister, Colleen, either. Megan’s always been my wild one. Always running from responsibility, running from reality. The running kind, period.”