The strength in her pretty body nearly matched his, Hector figured. And Hallie’s passionate, carnally charged nature perhaps actually eclipsed his own.
After so many years of solitude, she was, of course, love-starved. That quality had appeals all its own. But it wasn’t just pent-up sexual hunger that so drew Hector to the woman.
Hallie was fiercely passionate by nature and came back at him with ferocity and carnal candor that left him shaking and in awe.
It seemed to Hector that Hallie was his first woman since Brinke and he burned at her touch.
This impulse seized him: he’d sell that crazy and rambling casa down along the Rio Grande.
He’d cast off all the sentimental detritus of his picaresque, oft-times deplorable life. Just bring his books and clothes back to this perfect place smack dab in beautiful nowhere and kick back. Hector would grow old with Hallie.
Oh, he’d bring his Colt, of course—Ambrose Bierce’s old gun. He’d bring that iron just because around the farm there’d always be something needed putting down.
And it was a venerable old gun from a truer, surer time. Or so Hector kidded myself.
But that’s all the use it would evermore see.
No more trouble.
No more blood and thunder nonsense.
Hector would live the settled life with this woman he was falling so hard and deep for.
Theirs would be a good and quiet—an honest—life.
That was the unexpected place Hector’s thoughts had taken him to when Hallie called him for dinner.
34
Maybe Hallie had some kind of sixth sense.
Over more bourbon, she said, “I feel like the worst sort of heel, Hec.”
The name “Meg” hung unuttered between them.
“Hallie, I’m the one to blame in this. You haven’t done anything.”
She was emphatic. “I have these crazy notions, Hector. Wrongful yearnings.”
He took her hand. She squeezed back hard. He said, “What kinds of crazy notions?”
“About keeping you here, at gunpoint, if necessary,” she said. “Notions about you living here with me as a writer and my man. No more car chases, no more killing. No more knife cuts, bullet holes or whip wounds to add to your crazy collection of scars. But then I think of Meg and how wrong it is for me to wish you from her.”
Hector took Hallie’s hand and squeezed hard. “My mind’s been going to the same sorts of places, darlin’. I can’t believe how strongly my mind’s turning to it, but that’s all I’ve been thinking about these past hours. We need to talk more about this and seriously so.” He checked the clock on the kitchen wall. It was that time. “But I need a few minutes, first,” he said. “I need to call a friend.”
“The Irish policeman?”
“Jim Hanrahan,” he said. “I hope one day you two will meet. But I do have to call now. It’s a pre-arranged thing. There’s just a narrow window when we can talk. Marks to hit.”
“Then you’d better make your call, Hec.” Hallie squeezed Hector’s hand a last time and then let go to begin collecting dishes.
***
“Thank Christ, Hector,” Jimmy said. “Can’t tell you how relieved I am to hear your voice. Word filtered back this way that Tom Hawk had figured where you likely are.”
The writer in Hector relished saying it. “No worries there, Jimmy—that hatchet’s buried.”
“Well, fuckin’ hooray for our side! You’re well, then, Hector?”
“Snowbound, but aces over kings.”
“Snowbound?”
“A foot-and-a-half of the white stuff on the ground and plenty more to come. Then there are the drifts. You could hide a double-decker bus under some of those bastards out this way.”
“Oh, Christ, but that’s unfortunate. Really bad news, actually.”
“Just say it Jimmy. What’s coming?”
“I had this romantic notion Hawk would be a lone wolf, flying fully solo,” Jimmy said. “But Gibson’s wire taps indicate otherwise. Hawk tipped those ersatz Pinkertons. Gibson says they’re coming in after you, and I mean in force. May take them longer to reach you because of all that snow, but they’re coming, and with you all but snowbound, sounds as if you running isn’t an option, either.”
“It’s not,” Hector said. “Not by car, anyhow. I’m cut off from Meg and Shannon, right now. Maybe cut off for a few days because of the snow.”
“Calamitous luck, that.”
“Those Pinks will likely have to come back in here on foot,” Hector said. “Or snowshoes,” he added, trying to lighten the mood a bit. “You don’t suppose they can get themselves access to sleds and some huskies, do you?”
Jimmy wasn’t playing along. “Honestly? I put nothing beyond the reach of that bunch. Remember how they were in bad old days? They knew no boundaries.”
Hector knew his history well enough. He knew what you could lay at the feet of the Pinkertons, proper. These cast-offs by all accounts went darker still.
A hard swallow. “How long do you think I’ve got, Jim?”
“If you have the whole of another day, it would pleasantly surprise me,” Jimmy said.
“I best get a move on, then. God willing, we’ll talk again tomorrow night. We can set our rendezvous then. And by tomorrow night, maybe I can tell you the brilliant thing I haven’t even thought of yet to get the girls and me out of this mess.”
Hector hung up. Hallie frowned. She said, “It’s bad?”
“Very bad. See if you can raise your son on that radio gizmo, won’t you?”
***
Hector could hear the strain in Megan’s voice. “So what are we going to do now?”
“I’m still trying to think of that thing,” he said.
Megan, who sounded a little drunk, said, “No more Jimmy Hanrahan-like friends in Missouri? You don’t have any fellow, thrill-seeking, crime writer friends around these parts?”
Hallie was watching him. Hector shrugged and said, “If I did, they have no advantages in this weather that we don’t have.”
He bit his lip. Maybe that wasn’t quite true.
He clicked the mic button and said, “You all stay close to the radio, Megan. A friend may be contacting you on that thing shortly. Fella name of Les Dent. You can trust him, all the way up.”
Hector handed the microphone to Hallie and headed for his luggage to dig out his little black book.
35
His old pulp writer pal Lester said, “Didn’t know you were a ham radio buff, Hec. If you’re radioing all the way from La Mesilla, you’ve got to tell me what kind of unit you’re using. I need me that one, too.”
That was good old Les—always the technophile and gadget guy. It was Les’ penchant for gizmos that landed him his bread-and-butter job as chief writer for a long-running, recently-canceled pulp series focused on globe-trotting doctor-adventurer Clark Savage, Jr. and his intrepid crew of lesser supermen. It was the only pulp magazine Hector had kept reading as the years ground on, mostly out of love for Les.
“I’m on a friend’s rig,” Hector said. “I’m just a few miles due south of you.” Les and his wife, Norma, lived on a family dairy farm in La Plata. Hector said, “Do you still have that aerial photography business?”
“Have a near fleet of planes now,” Les said. “Have to have some income since that damned woman cancelled Doc. You know she skipped publication of one of the last ones I wrote? Great thing tied to the Russians having the bomb. Probably the best of the Docs I ever wrote. Called in In Hell, Madonna. Maybe the title was too brainy for her. You think that was it? Hell, it’s Billy Shakespeare, don’t you know?”
“Likely it was too brainy for her,” Hector said. “That bitch always did have sorry literary tastes.” She’d spiked a story or two of Hector’s, too. He hesitated, then got to it. “Snow has stopped down my way, at least for a time. Is it possible to fly in this weather?”
“Sure… possible,” Les said. “Advisable is a far different beast.”
“And what about landing? Say in a field? Could you do it?”
“If it was flat enough and had enough room to roll. We’ve got some crafts equipped to do that.”
“Then I need a big favor, Les. It’s a hell of a tale, buddy.”
Hector told Lester Dent his story.
***
Les agreed to call Rayburn via ham radio and tell him what he’d need Rayburn to set up by way of a marked landing strip. All of that was now between Les and Rayburn.
Hector was out in the barn changing the tire on Hawk’s 1948 Woody. He’d just put on the spare and tightened the lug nuts. His left arm ached from hauling the old tire off and mounting the spare, but he was getting by. Hector was setting about putting the chains on the front tire when Hallie slid into the barn and pressed the door closed behind her, shutting out the blowing snow. She rubbed her hands over her arms and said, “So what’s the plan?”
“My friend Les Dent will land his plane on your son’s farm,” Hector said. “Rayburn will set some fires or smudges to mark the strip so Les can find it from up there.” Hector jerked his head upward to indicate the sky. “Then Les will fly Meg and Shannon on to Kansas City. There’s another friend of mine there who’ll hook up with ’em. A rough customer who owes me a favor. He’ll see the girls safely to me, somewhere around Wichita. Once they’re back in my hands, I’ll make that final run for Mexico. I’ll try and hook up with Jimmy somewhere along the border. We’ll get the girls safely into Mexico and see ’em established, but well lost from searchers.”
Hallie nodded. “And then what?” This quaver in her voice. She waited for it.
A cautious smile. “Then I’m going to go to Cleveland and find some way of shutting down Vito’s business for all day and more,” Hector said. “I mean to put that monster down for keeps if I have to. Cut off the problem at the source, in other words.”
She searched his face. Bless her, she wasn’t one to toe around the central issue or the big questions. She just put it out there, naked and frank. “Will you find your way back here after you’ve done all those impossible labors, Hec?”
He smiled and stroked her jaw. “I surely will. Have to come back here for my Chevy, for one thing.”
Hallie wasn’t in a joking mood. He wiped the smile from his face and said, “I mean to get back here, Hallie. I truly do mean to do that. And if you’ll have me, I won’t be leavin’ next time I come here. Not leavin’ alone the next time, anyway.”
Hallie smiled and said simply, “I believe you.” She kissed him hard. “I want you, back here, safe and whole. I think you need me as much as I need you.”
That was all she said.
It was enough—hell, everything.
She helped Hector with the tire chain. “Why are you leaving your car here?”
“Because of all those ex-Pinkertons working their way back here,” he said. “Hawk’s fearsome reputation was such partly because he kept his identity deliberately murky. No photos of him or the like are in circulation. You’re probably one of the few people to have ever seen that bastard’s face.”
“I didn’t see it either,” Hallie said. “He was wearing his hood up. Had on sunglasses and a scarf covering his mouth and nose when he came here and confronted me.”
“That’s even better news,” Hector said. “He must have been truly paranoid about his appearance getting out. So I’ll wear Hawk’s scarf. It’s still there on the front seat. See, I’m going to see if I can find those ex-Pinkertons on my way out. I’ll pass myself off as Hawk and tell ’em I have word Meg and Shannon and me have doubled back east. Do my best to lead them away from here so you and your family won’t be bothered anymore by their bloody likes.”
“That sounds well beyond risky,” Hallie said.
“But well worth that risk,” Hector said. “I really think it can work. Critical thing now is that Les Dent get that plane of his down and then back up safely.” As Hector said it, he thought he could hear the distant buzz of an engine overhead somewhere.
God bless, Les—he was always the best of the Black Mask boys, and the only one Hector had stayed close to because Dent was so very solid.
As though she had again sensed what he was thinking, Hallie said, “You have good friends to do crazy, brave things like this for you at just a request. Mr. Dent’s a real man’s man flying in this weather. That kind of loyalty speaks well of you as a man.”
Hector waved that away and moved to rear driver’s side door of the Woody. “Les wrote almost all of the Doc Savage pulps. Doc’s kind of the ultimate American hero. The distance between old Doc and Les isn’t as wide as the gap between most writers and their characters.”
“Then in that this Lester sounds more than a little like you,” Hallie said.
“Maybe.” Then he mumbled, “But the Les in his works reads nicer than I do in my books.”
On that note, Hector dug around in a container Hawk had resting on the floorboards behind the front seat. He whistled low. It was full of guns and rifles and knives. A nasty looking double-barreled sawed-off, some WWII-issue hand grenades and even a longbow and some arrows.
Hector fetched the box of confiscated guns from his Chevy and added them to Hawk’s arsenal, just in case.
Hallie asked, “When will you leave?”
His fingers combed through her hair. “I’d hoped to spend the night.”
Hallie pulled him close. “Let’s go inside then. Let’s not waste anymore time.”
***
He lay in Hallie’s bed, stroking her strong, bare back.
Rayburn had contacted them earlier to confirm that Les had safely taken off with the girls.
Still later, Norma Dent had contacted Hector to confirm they’d safely reached Kansas City and were in the hands of his other friend there.
Everything seemed to be going perfectly to plan, a condition that always stirred the cynic in Hector.
Then the phone rang.
Hallie slid from under the warm covers, her slender bare body silhouetted in the moonlight through the window.
She shrugged on a warn, warm robe and padded into the kitchen to answer the phone. Hector reached for his Timex and switched on the bedside lamp: he was sorry to see it was already tomorrow.
He could hear fresh sleet lashing the window glass. Then he heard floorboards squeak. Hallie was headed back. She kissed him, hard and urgent again, their tongues tangling. Then she said, “You’d best dress. And be damn quick about it, Hec.”
He threw off the covers and reached for his pants. “What’s happened?”
“That was Lootie Wohill. Her place is five miles east of here. At the edge of that tangle of roads, as you put it. Fifteen, perhaps twenty men were just at her place asking about Meg. Asking about me. They were combing her farm when Lootie risked calling. Seems those Pinkertons or whatever they are are working their way back over our way. They’re acting like some occupation force, Lootie said. She said they have a bus and a dump truck with a snowplow mounted on the front. Sounds like the weather won’t be much of an obstacle for them.”
“Sounds that way,” Hector said.
Damn it all to infernal hell.
“I already packed Megan and Shannon’s things, all the evidence they were here,” Hallie said. “While you load the car, I’ll make you some sandwiches for the road.”
***
He slung his portable typewriter into the back of the Woody and slid behind the wheel and started her up. As he did that, Hector realized he’d never thought to check the thing’s tank. He got lucky—more than three-quarters full.
He twisted the keys to his Chevy off the ring and put them on the front seat of his car and then pulled the tarp back down over the Chevy’s door. Then he pulled the Woody out of the barn and locked the barn door behind himself. Somewhere in the night, he heard Traveller bray and pound the frozen ground.
Hector smiled ruefully thinking of the distance they might cover together if only that big unbroken horse would accept a sad
dle.
He found Hallie in the kitchen, finishing up his provisions.
He felt sick for what might be coming her way. “I’m so sorry for all this,” he said. “If I hadn’t brought the girls here?”
“Those men would have presumed Meg might have come here anyway,” Hallie said. “Hawk certainly did that. This isn’t your doing, heart-of-my-heart. Not any of it. You know that. To my eyes, you’re nothing less than an angel doing all this, Hector.”
Angel? Not of any stripe he’d ever heard tell of.
“I’ll do all I can to keep those men from coming back here to harass you and yours.”
Hallie smiled sadly. “I know you will do all that and more. And that scares me a little. Scares me for you, I mean.”
“Keys to my Chevy are on the front seat in case you need to move or hide it,” Hector said. “Pink slip’s in the glove compartment in case I don’t—”
Her fingertips were quickly there, pressed against his lips. “Hush, now. You’re coming back for that goddamn car. And when you do, you just try and leave again. This is your home now, Hector Lassiter. But for now, for this night and maybe the next few nights, you need to use all your past talents for running,” she said. “Use that sorry skill. Do it for all it’s worth.”
Hector almost said, It’s what I’ve always done best, but he held his tongue for once.
He kissed Hallie hard and held her close. “You be careful with those Pinkertons,” she said. “Don’t try anything crazy, thinking that you’re maybe protecting me.” Hallie shook loose from his hug and handed him a piece of paper. “I drew you a map to get you back to civilization.” Then she handed him a paper sack filled with food and a long silver thermos full of black coffee.
They kissed again, then he stepped out onto the porch into the chilly, wet wind. The sleet was coming down harder, and he knew it was going to be a white-knuckle drive along those twisting and confusing, moonlit back roads. He wished the weather and light was better so he could take another look at his future home to better commit it to memory.
Sighing, he slipped behind the wheel of the Woody and dialed around the radio until he found a country station. He pulled on some gloves, tied Hawk’s discarded scarf around his face and got his stolen wheels in gear.
The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 21