CHAPTER 8
A limp along to the gas station with a near empty tank is bad enough, but every time Amelia and Laura look at each other, they grin and giggle.
They had sex most of the night and then cuddled naked in the back of the car until well past dawn. And it shows. Between the two of them, they found exactly three hair pins, so their hair is down, two buttons are missing from Laura’s shirt, and Amelia’s dress is so wrinkled they might never let her back into the hotel.
And every ounce of makeup they were wearing has been kissed away.
Laura’s never been more beautiful, and she says the same about Amelia when she looks at her like she hung the moon.
She kinda wants to hold Laura’s hand, but she knows that’s the sort of thing the girls who call home crying every night do. Instead, she sits on her fingers and bites her lip whenever the car jostles, and remembers how good her night was.
They finally roll into the gas station—“Exactly two miles,” Laura crows—on fumes and prayers. While the attendant fills them up, Laura goes inside to make a phone call.
Amelia takes the moment—her first bit of alone time since an assassin tried to grab her—to just be. She lets all the bad stuff and all the good stuff settle over her like a blanket.
A lot’s happened in the span of a night, and she has to figure out a way to make sense—shit!
She scoots down low and peeks carefully out the window.
A black Pontiac’s rolled into the station full of no-good guys in suits. It drives slow like a glacier, inching past their stolen Cadillac while the fellas inside study it real close.
As she’s been doing a lot lately, she prays. This time that the Pontiac will keep on driving.
It doesn’t. Its brakes creak as it comes to a stop.
All four men exit and two head inside. The other two squint as they try and see who’s in the car. One stops to talk to the attendant. The other puts his hand on his hip. Next to the holstered gun.
There are, of course, options. But the option that presents itself to Amelia, the one that makes the most sense, is the one where she slides into the driver’s seat, wrenches the car into drive, and smacks the front end of the Cadillac into a man in a suit.
The other fella, the one who’s talking to the attendant and making the poor kid sweat, shouts.
Which is a perfectly reasonable response to seeing your friend smacked with the front end of a Cadillac.
She pops the car into reverse. Goes back a good twenty feet. She gives the gas station a quick glance. Laura’s holding her own, beating one guy with a tire iron while the other stumbles around, clutching his noggin.
She guns it into drive, screeches to a halt at the door, and leans on the horn. Laura slams the tire iron down once more for good measure and struts toward the door like the two fellas outside aren’t drawing their guns and trying to load the Cadillac full of bullet holes.
Laura slides in and says, “Move over.” Her tone is a little too imperious for Amelia’s ego.
Amelia ignores her, puts the Cadillac back into reverse and swings the whole car around the gas pumps so the back end runs into the guys with guns. They both go down.
“Yeah right. I saw the way you drive,” she says.
One of the fellas from inside the gas station stumbles out the door with his gun drawn. Amelia doesn’t flinch at the bullets.
That earns a suspicious look from Laura, particularly when she smoothly brings them back onto the road and sails through the light traffic like a fish in water.
“Amelia, dear, do you have something to tell me?”
“What? So you’re the only one who’s got secrets?”
“Mine involve national security.” They swerve around a milk truck. “Where exactly did you learn to drive like this?”
She checks the side mirror. The Pontiac is coming in fast. “We should have stopped to shoot out their tires.”
Laura turns to see what the fuss is about and mutters, “Aw hell.”
She pulls her gun from the glove box and checks the clip. “I’ve got four bullets and excellent aim. Do you think you can keep us steady?”
Okay, now Amelia is just insulted. “I’ll do you one better.”
She jams her foot on the brake. Smoke blooms as the brakes lock up and the whole car goes into a skid. Amelia controls the skid, and spins the car around so it’s perpendicular to oncoming traffic. In particular, to the Pontiac.
This gives Laura her shot.
It also, maybe, puts Laura in the threat of being crushed under a ton or two of American steel, but the shot set up is so golden that she really shouldn’t complain.
It’s just a pop pop. Then Laura’s looking at her like she’s gonna say “are you quite finished.” The Pontiac veers off the road into a ditch, its two front tires burst like grapes.
Amelia grins.
“I’m presuming it’s something to do with your uncle’s line of work. Because you were only a cab driver for three months.” Laura directs her north, and then toward Long Island. “We can skip Manhattan entirely,” she says, as she taps her chin. “Are you still involved in organized crime or was it a youthful indiscretion?”
“It’s old news, Laura.” Amelia keeps her eyes on the road.
“I don’t know about that. Besides, turnabout’s fair play, Amelia.” The way Laura’s got her tongue caught between her teeth as she grins makes Amelia want to pull the car over and play at Armistice Day some more.
She huffs. “Remember my brother living out in Nebraska?”
“The one who missed out on the draft because…” Laura waves down at her leg.
“Right. He didn’t lose his leg fixing cars in the shop.” She sucks in a breath through her teeth. “He got shot in the leg while knocking over a bank.”
Laura’s a smart lady and quickly puts two and two and three together. “And you were the getaway driver.”
She nods.
“Just the once or…” She absorbs the glance Amelia shoots her. “Ah. So you two used to rob banks.”
“I was a kid.” It’s not a great excuse. She was sixteen, it was the Depression, and she had a lot to prove to people who didn’t really care. And it was fun.
“Sure.”
“Laura. Come on—”
She waves her off. “I’m teasing, Amelia. While I’ll admit to being surprised, I can hardly judge you for knocking over a few banks—”
“Eight.”
Laura looks like someone hit her in the face with a frying pan. “Eight banks.” She shakes her head. “How did you get away with robbing eight banks?”
“Great driver?”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“And we didn’t all get away.” The smell of rot from her brother’s leg—festering from a bullet—still sits in her nose. Is gonna sit there forever, maybe.
Same with his screams as a quack sawed through bone and gristle to save his life.
“I thought I was the rebel in this car for parachuting into France.”
“Don’t worry. You still throw a punch better than I do.”
“What led to the end of your little ‘spree’?”
“Your bank robbing buddy loses his leg. It kinda takes the wind out of your sails. Dad dying didn’t help. My mom…It was a rough time for her.”
“And you?” Laura surveys her like she’s looking for scars she missed when they were stark naked. “Couldn’t have been easy.”
“I’m alive, aren’t I? Whole?” There’s gotta be something edgy and harsh in how she says it. Something sharp.
Because Laura’s trying to be consolatory. “I think we never can escape our past unscathed.” She’s careful. Like she’s in a mine field without one of those wands the boys use. “And while I have, on more than
one occasion, very much wanted to, I don’t think we should either.”
Coming out of that mouth, laced with that fancy Connecticut accent of hers, Laura’s words could sound really condescending. But she’s watching Amelia with a kind of empathy that screams “been there and done that, honey.”
So Amelia nods. “What doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger, huh?”
A watery laugh. “Maybe not stronger. Wiser.”
“Yeah?”
Laura’s smiling like she’s got a secret, like her own past has informed every little action she’s taken right up to and including banging Amelia’s brains out in the back of a stolen Cadillac. “Yeah.”
Laura’s directions aren’t half bad, and they end up at a fancy estate that’s all marble and glass and crazy shaped topiaries. The incredulous look Amelia shoots Laura makes her blush.
“I’ll admit Michel’s father’s choice of decor is… ostentatious.”
“Please tell me he’s got a statue of himself in the pond.”
“How do you know about the pond?”
Place this big in Long Island, filled with that many topiaries, always has a pond. And pools. And a garage full of cars that has the grease-monkey side of her positively moist.
That’s where they leave their bullet-riddled Cadillac. “I’ll have Michel dispose of it later today. And see to the reimbursement of its owner.”
“Thoughtful.”
“Michel’s father was a bit of a profiteer during the war. And he is forever grateful I saved his son from a Nazi ‘hotel.’ It won’t be a problem.”
Amelia’s heard only mutterings about the hotels. Places where good people were tortured until they coughed up every secret in their head.
Not the kind of place she’d want to spend the night.
The door between the garage and the house opens wide, and Amelia is introduced to a whole new side of Tall, Dark, and French. His shirt sleeves are rolled to the elbow, and he’s wearing an apron half covered in flour. Amelia does a double take.
“Michel,” Laura says officiously.
Michel looks from Laura to Amelia to their hands and back to Laura again. “I was beginning to worry.”
Laura and Michel have a rhythm to their banter, and Amelia doesn’t even try to intervene. She stuffs her face with fresh baked pastries, knocks back coffee strong enough to make her eyes cross, and listens with rapt attention as they discuss the roll of film burning a hole in Amelia’s pocket, along with mobsters and cadres of spies operating on US soil.
“What the heck is a cadre anyways?”
“A group,” Laura says rather distractedly.
“Juste,” Michel says, his mouth doing really nice things to that French word. “A group that has set their sights on you.”
Laura looks pissed, but Amelia just feels a little ashamed. She robbed eight banks in 1936 and was never caught. Being outed by some lousy spies she’s never met is just ridiculous.
Stupid dead Jimmy Andronico.
“At least I’ve a clue who they are,” Laura says.
“Russians,” Amelia says around some pastry.
“Yes. Russians, trying to make a deal with Italian communists through your uncle.” Laura places a lot of emphasis on that connection.
Amelia has heard tell of her uncle’s connections back in Italy. The Mafia connection no one ever talks about. The ones who were looking to end the fascist reign so the communists could take their place. “My uncle may not like me, but he’s not gonna kill me.”
“He might not have a choice. Right now, he’s failed his employers and will need to prove himself. As long as you’ve got the film, you’re a very handsome target.”
“Then we toss the film in that fire—”
A very unmanly gasp escapes Michel’s lips.
Laura purses her own lips. “That doesn’t solve the problem either.”
“So what—give it over to the communists?”
Michel starts muttering in low French, and Laura shoots him a scathing look. Scorching enough that the big baguette blushes and leaves the room, tray and cups in tow.
“More like use it to set a trap for them,” Laura says. Sort of like most folks say “I went to the market for some eggs.”
“You want to trap the spies who want to kill me?”
“Yes. At the very least, if I make it clear I have the film and you don’t, their interest in you will disappear.”
“Because it’ll be on you.”
She smirks. It’s this goddamn gorgeous cocky little thing. “I’m used to being a target. Setting a trap won’t be difficult.”
“With who? Me and the chef?”
“I’m not the only one left out in the cold. There are quite a few of us and an op like this…It could be just the thing we need to prove that dissolving the OSS was a mistake.”
The OSS—Amelia feels like someone’s sitting on her chest. Or maybe she’s got her whole hand in there. Squeezing. “You want the film so you can get a job?” She’s really impressed with how she doesn’t raise her voice.
Laura shakes her head like she means what she says next. “No, that’s merely an additional reason. I want the film so I can keep you safe.”
“How’re you supposed to keep me safe from a faceless cadre of spies?”
“For one thing, they’re not faceless. One of them infiltrated the hotel.”
She raises her eyebrow, but more at Laura using a word like infiltrated. “One of ’em was in the Sebastian?”
“Judy from 2E is in New York for more than stardom and excellent bagels.”
“Judy…Hayseed is a spy? Woman still hasn’t seen the Atlantic.”
“Woman is very good at lying. And an excellent spy, judging by her assassination attempt. I didn’t even suspect her until last night.”
“What changed your mind? She start humming the Soviet Anthem?”
“Saw her face when she tried to shoot mine off.”
Fair enough.
Laura continues, “Now that I know who she is and I have what she wants, it’s just a matter of setting her up. I have all the cards.”
“We have all the cards.”
“Of course. But,” Laura huffs, “Amelia, we can’t—you can’t—this has to be delicate.”
“I can be delicate.” She sounds defensive. Which is stupid, because she can be delicate. She’s done it at least twice in her life.
Laura sighs. “I’m not saying you can’t.”
“You just did!”
Laura breathes in deep through her nose. She looks worn out. She often does. Amelia gets that the whole world sits on her shoulders and pulls her down with the weight of it. Their little chats at the diner. What happened in the car. Amelia herself. They’re nothing more than respites from a world Laura feels too responsible for. “The war isn’t over.” She would remind Amelia if she said anything.
So Amelia doesn’t.
They sit there in one of the most uncomfortable silences Amelia’s ever suffered through. Laura looks at her with all the pain and weariness she’s been carrying around since the war, and Amelia tries to ignore all the unsaid stuff she never wants to hear.
Then. Then Laura goes and breaks the silence, and it’s with a mere whisper of Amelia’s name.
She hangs her head, and all of Laura’s weariness crawls up onto Amelia’s shoulders, too. “You really don’t want me to come, do you?”
“This operation—it’s so dangerous, Amelia. More than anything you could have—”
“So I play damsel in the tower, while you go off and fight the dragon.”
“I have experience.”
“I do too!”
“Robbing banks! Dealing with mobsters. I would think, after what you’ve seen, you’d realize tha
t this is two different worlds we’re talking about.” She’s been sitting on the couch opposite Amelia, and she leans back on it, arms crossed in a very final kind of way, chin jerked up like a snob. “And you are simply not equipped for mine.”
As much as Amelia wants to pop Laura in the mouth or maybe flounce out of the room, steal one of those cars, and do things all on her own. She doesn’t. She stands up and comes over and kneels on the floor by Laura. She curls her hand around Laura’s knee, looks up at her, and speaks real soft. Intimate. “So equip me.”
Laura closes her eyes.
Breathes in long and slow.
“You’ve got to know I want to.”
“Nothing’s stopping you. Nothing but your own stubbornness.”
Laura doesn’t agree. She frowns in a way that’s enough to break a heart. “People who come into my world—who even flirt with it—have a bad habit of not making it out.” Her hand cups Amelia’s chin, and she gently pulls her up so Amelia’s leaning over her. Holding herself up with a hand on the arm of the couch. Laura clearly wants to put their foreheads together. Maybe kiss her softly.
Amelia really wants her to, too. But she doesn’t cross those last couple of inches. This gap between them is the only bargaining chip she’s got. “I’m not like the rest of ’em, Laura.”
It’s unspoken, but both of them know what that gap means. What crossing it’ll do. But Laura crosses it anyways. Leans up and kisses her. Words like gossamer come to mind when she presses her lips so gently to Amelia’s.
“That’s what he said too—before he died.”
Getting compared to a guy dead in France.
Amelia gets…She gets sleepy. Truth be told, she’s been sleepy. But now it’s pulling at her insistently. Tugging on her brain and body.
Her arms grow heavy. Her eyelids don’t want to stay open. She droops.
Laura stands to catch her. Soothes her with gentle hands and words.
“What—”
“Your coffee. I knew you’d insist on coming.”
The Lavender List Page 8