“Sorry, baby. Emergency.”
“What’s going on?”
He knelt beside her, a tiny peck on the lips, grabbed his pants. “I can’t tell you everything, but I’ve got a witness not doing so well.”
“That was a hotel.”
“Safest place I could think of.”
He searched for his socks after kicking into his pants. Desiree grabbed his leg. “Let me come with you.”
“I don’t have time, baby.”
“Who is she?”
Franklin looked down at her. Let a long moment pass, maybe thinking of something to say. You know, even if he was fucking Ginny Lafitte, it wasn’t the end of the world. Just tell me, Desiree thought, and we can work it out. Hell, invite her to join us if that’ll do it for you. As long as I know, you know? Just drop the secrecy.
She said, “Don’t leave like this.”
He sighed. Pulled his leg away from her grip and sat on the bed. “Baby, it’s the job. I can’t say no to an emergency.”
“At a goddamned hotel around midnight?”
He gave up on his shoe, got down on his knees and scooted over to her like a much younger man. Settled his forehead against hers. “This isn’t something to fight about. I can’t tell you. All I can ask is that you trust me, okay? She’s a witness. That’s all. Ain’t nobody but you for me, understand?”
Desiree liked him this close, liked feeling his heat. Wanted to believe him. Jesus, yes, she wanted to believe him. Problem was time. Time had built the wall. And no matter how hard she wished it to be gone instantly, the damn thing was going to need some jackhammers and dynamite. Secret midnight outings? Like a teaspoon trying to dig its way through.
She wanted to believe him anyway. She nodded. He kissed her cheek. Lingered. She turned her mouth to him. There it was. One stick of dynamite, all in that kiss. But he broke it way too soon, slipped into sneakers instead of the dress blacks, didn’t bother with buttoning the shirt, just grabbed a windbreaker and left like that, half-dressed and in a hurry. Desiree pushed herself up, couldn’t decide where to go. Back to bed? Out into the living room to wait for Franklin?
He appeared in the doorway again. “Listen, I don’t know how long this’ll take. Get some sleep and I’ll take the couch when I get back. Okay?”
Nothing to say. She crossed her arms. Nodded. Lips tight.
“Baby, please?”
She cleared her throat. “It’s okay.”
He blew her a kiss, and then he was gone.
Desiree waited a few minutes, not moving except in a slow three-sixty. Take the fucking couch? He didn’t even do that when things were really bad between them. What, like the evidence of that woman wouldn’t still be there the next morning?
It had taken her long enough to get most of what happened in Minnesota out of him. Months. Franklin was so loyal he would rather backhand his own wife than break confidentiality. Here he was starting all over again.
Desiree walked over to the bedside phone, called information for the hotel’s number, then dialed it.
Once she had the same manager on the phone again, Desiree said, “Yes, my husband is on his way down, but he wanted me to email the right file to his partner’s cell…I know, I know, but he’s not answering. I think he accidentally turned it off after talking to you. All I need is the last name so I can boot up his files and send it along…no, not at all. Happens all the time. You shouldn’t worry…Government wives, you know. Sworn to secrecy by proxy. Honest. Just the last name of the witness, because he told me but it’s a hard one. Doesn’t it sound French? Starts with ‘L’?”
She fully expected him to say “Lafitte”. Was prepared for it one hundred percent. When the manager said it, though, it still sent a chill through Desiree like a bad tooth hitting ice cream.
“Thank you.” She hung up.
*
McKeown was sleeping nice and hard. Really hard. When his cell phone beeped and buzzed on the bedside table, he took in a deep breath and surfaced from the dream he had already forgotten, and his cock was an iron beam. Oh man. And Alex’s head was on his chest like it had always belonged there. Coming back to Alex’s place had been the right move. It just moved right along, like they both knew the moment Alex stepped into the coffee shop that this was it. McKeown was a ball of nerves after talking to Rome, so he needed it more than he had first expected. So it took one more coffee, one stop at the liquor store for a bottle of South African wine, and only one short conversation that led to kisses, stripping, and Alex on his knees.
They must’ve both fallen asleep quickly. McKeown didn’t remember dozing off. Just pillow talk that turned into a beach and the sound of waves, remembering bits of the dream, but once the cell phone went off, it seemed to McKeown that hardly any time had passed at all. They were tangled up in Alex’s fine blue sheets, lights still on outside the bedroom door, a couple of candles in the room flickering, hardly melted at all since Alex had lit them.
The phone went again, reminding McKeown of why he was awake again in the first place. Shit. It didn’t get to Alex, breathing deeply, way out there somewhere. The nightstand was within reach without having to jostle him, so McKeown took it. Checked the time first—11:47. So, yeah, only an hour of sleep. The ID showed the office calling, of course. Well now he had to get up. No choice. Couldn’t risk Alex hearing this.
He opened the phone, whispered “Just a minute” into it, then hit MUTE while he slid out from under Alex, who couldn’t help but blink his eyes open and lift his head.
McKeown said, “Need to pee.”
“You’re coming back, right?”
“Yeah, just a minute.”
“Why do you have your phone?”
“I’ll be right back.”
McKeown couldn’t find his underwear in the candlelight. Didn’t have time to let his eyes adjust. He headed for the brightness of the hall, found the bathroom and locked it. Sat on the toilet. Felt like shit, but highly caffeinated shit. Like a triple-espresso headache. The lights in here were dim, florescent, but he still had to squint. Saw the phone in his hand. Almost forgot why he’d gotten up. How much of that wine did he drink?
He turned off the mute. “Agent McKeown here.”
“Were you asleep?”
McKeown didn’t recognize the voice. “Do I know you?”
“No, sir, I apologize. I talked with a woman who transferred me to you. I’m with the Minnesota Highway Patrol. Weren’t you guys looking for a biker earlier today?”
McKeown sobered up. He’d had four glasses of wine. Too much coffee. The beach in his dreams was a combination of one he’d visited in North Carolina as a kid and some sci-fi movie he’d watched a few weeks ago. And he remembered in vivid detail everything he and Alex had done together that night. His dick was still fully erect.
“Still looking for him.”
The Trooper said, “Well, we found the bike.”
*
McKeown dressed in the living room, left Alex in bed. He tried collecting his clothes quiet as a cat, but had banged into a couple of walls, rattled his belt buckle, and made a few floorboards creak. Still, Alex slept on.
The Trooper had said that some kids had tried to sneak the bike into one of their backyards. Kid’s dad was up, heard a noise. All it took was a hard slap to get the full story. A man matching Lafitte’s description had traded the motorcycle for an old station wagon, gone off with the older girl who always bought the kids cigarettes and beer. No word from her since then. An APB was out for the wagon, but McKeown wanted to talk to the kids himself, see if Lafitte had slipped and revealed anything that might help them out. Which meant he had to catch a plane out of Memphis pronto.
Can you fuck a guy and then leave like this without feeling like dirt? Especially after lying to him about who you really were. When would McKeown be back in Memphis again anyway? It had been a temporary assignment, Rome pulling some strings without having to reveal the real reason for the transfer. Said it was an old cold case, which meant that
except for a couple of progress reports, everyone here left McKeown alone. He could imagine himself coming back for Alex, though. So, okay, maybe it wasn’t so grim. Tell him you’ve been called out of town on business, confidential client, etc. Lay the “FBI” stuff on him when the time was right. But not on the first night you’ve slept with him.
Shit timing no matter how you looked at it. The guy was going to take it the wrong way, period. All the reassurances in the world wouldn’t keep the brain from equating “Important Business Trip at Midnight” to “Fuck and Run”.
Then maybe don’t say anything at all, slip out while Alex snored. He looked good like that, sheet only covering one leg and his crotch. McKeown wanted another look at his ass. Voice in his head said, Yeah, you take off, you’d better have a good memory, because that’s the last you’ll ever see of it in the flesh.
McKeown crossed his arms, holding his socks in one hand. Fuck.
*
On his way back to the hotel to grab his stuff, McKeown had to concentrate hard to keep from welling up. Like he could just show up again at one of Alex’s shows and not find the guy an ice cube. Maybe go in his black suit, flash the ID, get it out of the way immediately. All of that had to take a backseat to the manhunt, though. A personal beef now on the national stage. Real subtle, Rome. Absolutely low-key. Didn’t matter. McKeown needed to get to Lafitte first. If he could do that, make the man understand that the Bureau would work out a good deal if he would wear a wire when facing Rome again, then McKeown was set. That was a careermaker, regardless of who had what photos.
The only reason he was on Rome’s clown crew was because he’d screwed around with that lush. She’d said it was an “open marriage”, and she came on strong. Maybe that was why he fell—she was as aggressive as a man, chasing her prey and pinning him down, no escape. Not like it would cost her a job or anything.
He’d stuck Alex’s band’s demo CD in, and was getting into it a bit before remembering. He thought about throwing it out the window. Yeah, there you go. Good move, if you were sixteen. Keep it. Still a good night, at least for those few hours. He punched the FM button instead, the pop channel he’d found when he first rented the car, and listened to Christina Aguilera sing some racy lines in the style of a 1940s big band number. And she got away with it, too.
He pulled into a spot at the hotel. Fuck Rome. Fuck Alex. Fuck Lafitte. He wondered if the brass would let him have his choice of assignments. Thinking about living in NYC almost made him forget the taste of Alex. Almost.
SEVENTEEN
So much time on the road, and Lafitte wasn’t even out of South Dakota yet. He’d made one big fucking circle. And before much longer, he would need sleep. The road was getting to him. The rush of adrenaline from nearly being killed by Nate and Colleen, then carjacking Fawn after she helped him, was beginning to seep, leaving Lafitte like a deflated balloon.
If he had to stop, fine. Find a cheap hotel that would take cash and ask no questions, lose the car—leave the keys in, park it at a McDonald’s or Taco John’s. Find some clothes without getting noticed by security cameras, then hack off the hair and beard. By morning, he’d be unrecognizable, except to his family and Rome, probably. As long as it got him past the patrol cops.
He had to make Sioux Falls first, the biggest city for miles and miles out here in the middle of nowhere. Needed its hustle and bustle in order to get lost for as long as it took to sleep himself back to full-strength. Thought about fucking Star Trek, teleporters, snap your fingers and you’re there. Not yet. These days, it was either fly or grind, and he goddamn well couldn’t fly anonymously.
The Interstate was dead straight and pitch dark. He wondered if Ben and Wesley had hidden the chopper away like he told them to, or if they went joyriding, called their friends, got noticed. With these goddamned kids, might as well assume the latter. Every overpass or exit ramp Lafitte slipped past without seeing lights flash in the rearview, that was a lucky one. Luck had a time-limit. And Sioux Falls was still nearly an hour South.
He fingered the cell phone. Steel God. Pretty much shot that dog dead. But the man left the door open just a bit, remember.
No, I can’t, thought Lafitte. Not yet, anyway.
Why not call Ginny then? Hell, why not? Just call and ask what’s going on.
Rome would love that. Lafitte laughed and played it out for the empty car. “Hey, honey? Yeah, it’s me. So would you mind telling me what the commotion is down there?”
He laughed more and couldn’t finish it out. Felt the hard bumps on the shoulder of the interstate and jerked the wheel left. Good thing the road was empty. Only sleep and deer to worry about. He realized that he might not get to see Ginny and the kids at all, even if he made it. Until right fucking then, he’d imagined slipping past whatever gates Rome had put up, but that didn’t seem so easy any more. He could barely get out of Minnesota without almost dying, so what were the chances of him driving a thousand miles without being seen?
Slim. None.
Why do it?
No answer from the little voice in his head. Come to think of it, Lafitte couldn’t remember what that voice sounded like.
He’d thought about all that had happened back in Minnesota plenty out on the road. Why hadn’t he killed Rome? Thought about it in bars, in tents, in bed while Kristal sucked his cock. The best answer he came up with, and it wasn’t nearly good enough, was you couldn’t kill a man for doing his job. It hadn’t been personal. That’s what it turned into later, apparently, thus this trip, but back then Lafitte would’ve checked off the same list as Rome—Suspect waves around a shotgun? Shoot without hesitation. Got an obvious number one suspect? Go after him harder than the law said you should. Evidence looking a little ambivalent? Follow your gut.
If Lafitte had shot Rome, he would’ve been killing himself.
No, not exactly. He would’ve been killing the cop he might have become if he weren’t such a fucking scoundrel.
Every night before he closed his eyes, there they were. Photos of Drew on the slab, wounds cleaned by the medical examiner. Graham’s shredded body, bleeding from everywhere. Rome’s bloody face. Ultimately, they were all on Billy Lafitte’s tab.
Hey, he was looking at them all right now, flashing by in stills, a slide show. Which meant he had closed his eyes.
Open.
The car was inches from the median ditch. Reflex, hard right. Red lights. A semi had pulled alongside while he dozed. Fucking wagon was going under the trailer. Hard left. Shit, might fishtail. Goddamned wagon was tail-heavy. Lafitte gripped tighter, eased the speed down. Gently. The car stopped feeling like it wanted to snap in two. He took in a deep breath and let the semi get out of the way before pulling onto the shoulder and throwing it into Park. Lafitte let his head loll against the headrest and took in massive breaths, let them out, in again. Held it. Then out.
He expected some survival instinct to take over and slap him awake and keep him one step ahead of whoever was looking for him. He thought about getting out of the car, pacing a little to get the energy flowing again. And suddenly he was outside. Didn’t feel cold, but he was still shivering. He was actually watching himself pacing behind the car like it was on TV. A glance off to the right in the scrub brush. Ginny was standing there, not dressed for the cold. Baggy gym shorts, barefoot. A hoodie sweatshirt. She didn’t look so good.
“Get in the car. You’ll freeze to death,” Lafitte said.
She shook her head. “I’ll be fine. What are you doing?”
“I was coming to see you, but I guess you found me first.”
Ginny’s teeth chattered. Her sweatshirt was blood-stained. Lafitte remembered now. This was Ginny soon after they’d had Ham, when her hormones went a little nuts and she tried to kill herself. Couldn’t handle the pressure of being a mother, and she hated getting so little sleep. She tried opening the vein in her left wrist with a corkscrew.
Lafitte asked, “Why is it you?”
“Oh Billy, You can’t come see me, yo
u know. Why even try?”
She had been in the hospital for a couple of days, evaluated, and then seemed to calm down. She took to Ham fine after that, didn’t have any more episodes. The doctor slipped some info to Lafitte, though, even though he wasn’t supposed to.
“She’s afraid of you,” the doc said. “Afraid of disappointing you. Maybe you said some things to her about how you wanted Ham to be brought up? Things she disagreed with you on?”
Well, yeah. But isn’t that what it means to be married? You talk it all out. Lafitte had no idea that had bothered Ginny so much. After all, he was just excited to be a dad. His own father died when he was young, so now he had a chance to be someone else’s dad and do it right.
What was with this guilt-trip shit, Ginny trying to push the responsibility for her gutless, heartbreaking little stunt off on him? Things changed between them after that. It was like Lafitte had to become two different people—the one Ginny saw at home, and the hardheaded bastard who worked the streets and got himself dirty. As long as those two roles were kept far apart, life was good. Once she got a peek at the other side, it started downhill again until she pushed him off on his own.
So she wanted to wash her hands of him? Fine. He had respected that. Until Rome got involved.
Lafitte stepped closer to Ginny, took her left arm and turned it over. Wrapped in gauze, small red spots. “What’s Rome done to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Really?”
She lifted her chin. “I’m more worried about what he’s done to you.”
Goddamn it, he hadn’t even gotten out of the car. He’d fallen asleep and dreamed it all. Only realized that when he woke because someone was opening the car door he’d been leaning on. He caught himself midfall, wasn’t fully focused yet. Then a couple pair of hands grabbed him by the jacket and threw him to the ground.
Voice like a kid: “Knock him out! Come on!”
“Shut up or get back in the car,” from a man, much rougher but stinking of the Minnesota accent.
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