Mother.
He had never called her “Mother” before. It was always “Ma,” or “Mom.” Never “Mother.” Not until he had married that woman, who took him out of the city.
She shuddered at the memory of the day he had left, kissing her, hugging her, inviting her again to come live with them where it was safe. All the while, that woman standing behind him, smile as false as the eyelashes and the fancy fur and the teeth, my God, the teeth so perfect you could tell they’d been capped a mile away, for crying out loud.
Then Prescott barked behind the closed door. Just once. To let her know he knew she was still out here. Dithering like an old maid.
“All right, darling,” she whispered. “All right, all right, I’ll be back soon.”
If, she thought as she adjusted her gloves and stepped outside, she wasn’t murdered first.
She hadn’t taken two steps before she realized she was crying.
* * * *
7
“Is everybody in the world out shopping, Mom?”
“Joey, I told you to stop it.”
“I want to try another number.”
“And I’m hungry, kiddo, so how about we have the ice cream first?”
“Can I call after?”
“Yes, you can call after.”
“Chocolate?”
“Yes.”
“Then will they be done?”
She looks at the mechanic, at the driver smoking beside him, and shrugs. The only announcement she’s heard said the company was doing its best to get this vehicle back on the road, but meanwhile, they were bringing another one down from Staser, just in case.
“I hope so,” she says. “I really hope so.”
* * * *
8
Tony took his time getting dressed, scowling at his stomach when it rumbled, scowling at the kitchen when he couldn’t find anything that appealed to him.
So, big deal. A trip to the Korean’s, what’s the problem? It’s a beautiful fall day, get what you want, come home, eat, roust Ari, and ... do something.
Call the kids.
What the hell.
He pulled on a new cardigan, rolled his eyes when the buttons strained at their holes, and hoped Ari wouldn’t fuss about his weight. Always fussing, that man. Always worried about something or other.
He made sure he had his wallet. He made sure in the mirror by the door that he looked okay. He made sure he had his keys, and then he went out onto the stoop, enjoying the chill the wind cast across the street.
Finally, it felt like October.
It was about time.
“Good morning, Mrs. Lefcowitz,” he said to the little woman just passing the steps.
She froze, trembling like a wet dog.
Tony frowned. “Mrs. Lefcowitz, you okay?”
Her head swiveled slowly toward him, and he couldn’t help but gape at the tears he saw making tracks on her cheeks, in her makeup, the way she clutched her bag as if he were going to steal it.
“Mrs. Lefcowitz, what’s wrong?”
Bad news, he guessed; the poor old woman’s had bad news. That damn kid of hers, out on the Island. What the hell has he done now?
He took a step down, smiling sympathetically, one hand out as if to offer comfort.
Ida’s mouth opened.
Wide.
Mewling, whimpering.
“Oh, my God, Ida.” He was afraid now she was having an attack of some kind. “Oh my God.”
He hurried down to the sidewalk, checking the street for someone who might help, then reached out to take her elbow. “Let me take you back home, Ida, okay?” He leaned down. “Let me help. You need medicine or something?”
“You,” was all she said, her eyes wide, not blinking in the wind.
Startled, he let his hand drop. “I... what?”
She backed away, still trembling, still crying, one white-gloved finger trying to point. “You.”
Oh hell, he thought, and looked to the doorway, hoping by some miracle that Ari would be there. He knew how to handle situations like this; he would know what to do. Hysterical women were not Tony’s forte.
Then she said something else, and he jerked his head around. “What, Ida? What did you say?’’
“You,” she whispered harshly, lips twisting, hands flailing at her chest, at the air. “I saw you.”
He didn’t know what to say. The old woman kept backing off, nearly tripping over herself, head shaking violently, those hands still batting at the air. His smile flicked on and off, on and off, as he searched the street for a cop, for Ari, for any damn somebody to take care of this woman before she dropped dead where she stood.
Suddenly she bolted. Just turned and ran. Scurried away, looking over her shoulder, eyes gleaming with tears, mouthing things at him, whimpering.
He didn’t move.
That night.
He took a deep breath.
I saw you that night.
* * * *
2
H
e stands on the side of the two-lane highway, in a baggy denim shirt with the sleeves rolled down, baggy jeans almost new. A duffel bag lies at his booted feet. He is tall and seems lean despite the looseness of his clothes. His hair is cropped short, speckled through with iron gray, too short to be touched by the slow steady wind that blows across the empty prairie.
Five cars have passed him in the last three hours. Not one of them slowed down.
He doesn’t mind.
He has learned there is no sense railing or even swearing at things you can’t control. A waste of good energy. A waste of valuable time.
Besides, he knew all along that this road would be less traveled than the interstate not twenty-some miles away. Fewer opportunities to keep his feet from aching, fewer chances to rest, less people to have to talk to.
That suits him just fine.
Ten minutes later he hoists the bag to his shoulder and begins to walk. On the road; no sense using the sloping shoulder where he might turn an ankle, hobble him, slow him down. The land is flat here, the mountains so far in the distance they were little more than haze. There’ll be plenty of warning when the next chance comes along.
An hour later, the sun just past noon, he hears the engine behind him and stops, drops his bag, looks west, and sticks out his thumb.
He’s not worried.
A sound like that is no high-powered machine. He guesses a pickup long past its prime, and grins when he sees he’s right. Turns the grin to a polite smile as the pickup draws nearer, his shoulders slumping just a little, his knees sagging just right. Look too strong, too able, the driver might think you can walk all the way to Kansas without breaking a sweat.
The truck slows.
Stops.
The driver leans over and says, “Hey.”
He nods. “Hey, yourself. Lift?”
“Where you headed?”
He nods east, wearily. “Don’t matter, really. Place where there’s work.”
The driver, young and trying to grow a beard, shrugs. “Tell me about it.” He shrugs again. “Stow your stuff and hop in. Could use the company.”
The duffel bag goes into the bed, beside a ripped tarp that doesn’t really cover a worn saddle and whatever else was beside it. The hitcher climbs in, groans his pleasure and grins, and thanks the driver for the lift.
“No sweat. Like I said, I could use the company.”
An out-of-work cowboy, the hitcher learns, wandering from ranch to ranch without a hell of a lot of luck. Tried rodeo for a while but that didn’t work out. Tried piecework in a factory outside Boulder, but that didn’t work, either. Tried a lot of things.
The hitcher nods how well he knows that song, but doesn’t offer a verse of his own. A few grunts, some meaningless crap about jobs for men his age being too few and far between, and the out-of-work cowboy is pleased to pick up the slack. He’s not as young as he looks, but the roads he’s been on don’t show in his face.
He has stories.
Finally he says, “Man, I gotta take a leak,” and pulls over, nothing but prairie and sky and a long straight road, and the hitcher climbs out to stretch his legs, leans into the bed and opens his bag.
The driver comes back, grinning.
The hitcher grins in return. “You okay?”
“Never better.”
“Stupid son of a bitch.”
The hitcher lashes his right arm out and catches the cowboy square across the face with the claws of a hammer.
The cowboy shrieks and stumbles back, hands clamped to the hole that was his cheek, trips as he steps onto the shoulder, and falls onto his side.
The hitcher straddles him, no jokes, no laughter, and uses the hammer again.
And again.
Carefully leaning away from the spray and spray of bone and hair.
Then he grabs the cowboy’s ankles and drags him into the prairie, far enough from the road that even a high-riding trucker couldn’t spot him. Money from the pockets, eighty dollars, a few quarters. Nothing more. He leaves the wallet, isn’t so dumb that the credit card tempts him.
As he returns to the pickup he makes sure there’s no blood on his jeans, on his shirt, wipes the hammer clean on the buffalo grass and puts it back into his bag, slides in behind the wheel, checks his face in the rearview mirror, and drives on.
Five minutes later he begins to laugh.
He has forgotten how good it feels, the rush, the tingling; almost as good as the loving of a good whore. And here it was only Monday. He patted the front of his left shoulder with his right hand, a sign to keep his good luck intact:
It won’t last.
He isn’t stupid.
But he is determined that it will last just long enough.
* * * *
3
1
C
louds move over the Gulf toward the delta, high and thin, streaming from a dark band that bulges on the southern horizon. Gulls make their way inland, not hurrying. Not yet. And the water is marked by only a handful of white-caps.
Around the city, flags and pennants begin to stir.
The tourists are grateful the air has begun to cool; the locals begin to check their shutters and candles.
* * * *
2
Lisse Montgomery didn’t believe in astrology, but her mother had always told her, only half joking, that she must have been born under a bad sign for all the trouble she used to get into when she was a kid.
Not that anything has changed, she thought glumly.
Here she was, sitting in her dreary kitchenette bright and early Monday morning, her car half dead in the apartment parking lot, some kind of maybe big old storm making its way in off the Gulf, hardly any sleep the night before, and no job to go to. It was enough to make her cry, but she had already done that last night until her throat was raw and her eyes puffed up and she had come that close to deciding to swim the river with an anvil tied around her neck.
Foolish, of course, it wasn’t all that bad, but she figured she was entitled to a little self-pity.
Later, or after the storm passed, whenever the energy struck her and she got tired of this place, she would haul her sorry butt downtown, work on her smile, and start making the rounds. Hotels, cafés, casinos, restaurants...there were scores of places that could use her particular service industry skills. Scores of them.
But damnit, she had liked the Royal Cajun. Slow and easy, a few perks here and there, nice people to talk to, to work with, no pressure to speak of.
John Bannock.
She made a face.
Sometimes, swear to God, no matter how hard she tried, she still acted like a moony teenager, forgetting everything she had learned about men over the years, everything she had learned about herself. It was like a switch gets thrown and her brain turns off. No more sense than a log and twice as thick.
She had long since decided that her sign was the black cat.
John Bannock.
He was different, though, nobody could argue with that, and she certainly couldn’t claim that he hadn’t shown her an interesting time. That he hadn’t been a gentleman. That he hadn’t been honest with her from the first time they’d met.
And he sure had a way with words. Never once talking down to her. Never treating her like a waitress, someone to serve him, then wave away.
Angel, he had called her; she was his angel.
Of course he’d been dead drunk at the time.
Still, he had called her his angel.
She giggled.
Angel.
Yeah. Right.
Still...
“Imagine it, Momma,” she said to the chipped coffee cup she held in her left hand. “I slept with a drunk, and he didn’t even touch me.”
No, he gave her dreams instead.
No, he had done something to a punk kid neither of them could explain.
No, he ...
...looked so hurt, so darned hurt when she’d walked away from him yesterday afternoon, and every time she remembered, the tears cranked up again.
Except now.
She pushed away from the table only big enough for two, and wandered into the front room. Nothing fancy here, definitely nothing expensive, but it was as comfortable as her tips and meager salary had been able to make it. A couple of chairs, a couch, a flea market end table, a coffee table, travel poster prints on the walls with strings of Krew beads draped over the frames, a TV, and an air conditioner in the window that was a genuine miracle—it worked, and it was, most of the time, practically silent.
Decent, she thought, not exotic.
Today it felt hollow.
John Bannock was missing.
“Oh, please,” she muttered, and decided to get dressed, get moving, get a job.
After all, what had he really done for her? Gave her a little work for which he had paid too much and they both knew it. Had her read about people who were going to die. Saved her butt from that lech who had turned out to be that preacher on TV. Made her laugh. Took her on a ferryboat picnic where she had seen a dreamcrow’s blue eyes in the blue eyes of a boy. Had her spend a couple of hours in a police station.
Scared her half to death, for crying out loud.
And she had left him alone.
“You,” she said to the bathroom mirror, “are a piece of work, Lisse Gayle. Ain’t you got any shame?”
The trouble was, she did.
She saw it in the way she fussed with her hair, keeping it down on her shoulders, letting the curls do their work; the way she fussed with her blouse—how many buttons to keep open?; the way she wished she had more clothes to try on.
There was no fooling herself.
She had to go.
If nothing else, she had to apologize for the way she had behaved. If she didn’t, it would eat at her something awful, and then it would be too late because he’d be gone.
Stands to reason she was about to make a great fool of herself, and the only thing that could save her would be that damn fool car giving up the ghost to protect her from doing something she couldn’t understand.
It didn’t.
* * * *
3
Ace, what do you think you’re doing?
“Packing.”
Why? Are you finished?
“What difference does it make? I’m getting out. Haven’t you heard? There’s a storm coming.”
That’s not why you’re leaving.
“You know so much, why bother to ask?’’
I know what I know, Ace, I know what I know. So where are you going?
“You have to ask?”
You know the rules, John. You have to say it.
“Home, Patty, okay? I’m going home. I’ve had it. I quit. No more. You were right all along. I’m not a writer, I’m what they used to call a pencil pusher, except now I use a computer and some fancy programs to do most of the work. The only reason those articles sold was because of George, not because of anythi
ng I did.”
In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02] Page 17