Midnight Lullaby

by James D F Hannah

  I motioned toward the expanse of cars in the parking lot and the greater expanse of nothing beyond the lot. "I'm stunned you're ready to leave all of this."

  "It's time. The government can find me easy enough. They cleared me, so I figure I should get out of Parker County. Me and the girls need a change of scenery. Somewhere where everyone doesn’t chat up every fucking detail of my life."

  "Fresh air will do you a world of good," I said as I lit a cigarette, blissfully awash in my irony. "Where you headed?"

  "Back up to Cincinnati. A friend got a job lined up for me."

  "So much for the fresh air. Wish you the best. Shame we met under these circumstances. What about Woody? Are you and he still—"

  "No. We said our goodbyes a few days ago. He's great, but he isn't really built for life with kids. Anyway, he'd just as soon die as leave here." She smiled at me. "I owe you a lot of thanks, Henry. What you did was fucking insane, and I'd have called anyone else a goddamn idiot for trying it, but you got my girls home and I can't imagine how to repay that."

  I took a long drag off of my cigarette. "A share of that three hundred thousand would be nice."

  She paused for a moment. Twisted her face up. Then she let it go. A smile returned to her face. "The Feds keep asking me about it."

  "They still talking like Walters has it hidden somewhere?"

  "No idea. Don’t care, either. I'm not going out to buy a boat or nothing with it. That money will buy me and my girls a new life."

  "It's dirty money, Bobbi."

  "It won’t be once I’m done with it."

  I finished my cigarette and flicked it away. I wondered if I looked as cool as Mitchum. Not a chance in hell.

  "Where's it been?" I said.

  "In Cincinnati, hidden somewhere safe. That day the guys from the Brotherhood showed up at his house, I was nosing around in the closet and I found the suitcase and the money. When I figured out what Richie was into, with the Brotherhood, I used the spare key he gave me, snuck into the house when no one was there, and took the money."

  “When did you and Jeremiah Mayhew hook up? Did he already know about the money, or did you tell him about it?”

  She ran her hand through her hair and gave it all a good shake. “There’s just no fucking secrets from you, is there, Henry?” She sighed. “When did you figure that part out?”

  “When Walters kept telling me he hadn’t sent Mayhew and Teller after me. I kept assuming that when they said to keep out of people’s business, they were talking about Walters, but no, they were telling me to stay out of your business. Wasn’t like there was a shortage of attention on you being missing, but the last thing needed was me adding to it.”

  She lit her own cigarette. “The stuff he believes isn't right, but he’s not a bad guy, either. When he followed me after that day at Richie’s house, I confronted him and, yeah, it’s fucked up I slept with a guy stalking me, but I don't always make the sanest choices. When he and I figured out there was all this money, we talked out how to get away with it.” She glanced back at her daughters. “I figure they'd blame Walters and kill him and that'd be the end. I’d come back and get the girls and Jeremiah would leave the Brotherhood and off we’d go.”

  "Except Monica Mayhew showed up and needed money to pay off a drug debt."

  “She fucked everything up. Jeremiah said his loyalty was to his blood, so he picked that side of the fight.”

  “Which makes me wonder what you hoped for by stirring me into the pot, Bobbi. You showed up at my door thinking what?”

  She turned away from me as if she had the capacity for shame or embarrassment. "Honestly?"

  "No, Bobbi, lie like you have the entire fucking time. Goddammit, yes, tell me the goddamn truth."

  She looked at me with a hard yet blank expression. "I hoped you'd kill them, and everything else would go away, and me and the girls, we could leave with the money."

  I didn’t even have words for that. It didn’t keep me from talking, though, because damn little ever does.

  "That's maybe the worst fucking plan I've ever heard in my life. That is a plan so terrible, I'm shocked I didn't come up with it." I gestured toward the back seat of the station wagon. "What about them? You had the money. The Mayhews took your daughters. We could have bought time and gotten them the money and let this thing end."

  "No. No. No." She repeated the word as if my suggestion was the craziest thing she’d ever heard. "They wouldn't have hurt my girls. They're—" She caught herself and she looked at her daughters for a long moment. "They're just little girls, Henry. Jeremiah wouldn’t let her hurt them. Even with everything with his sister, they'd have been safe with him."

  I remembered meeting Mitch Fisher, the catalyst for all of his, and his insistence on what a good mother his sister was. I wondered if he knew any of this, or if it mattered if he did.

  Did she honestly believe all this? Even after everything that happened? After Teller? After me losing a finger? After Thompson getting shot and her daughters kidnapped? Was she really that convinced that the Brotherhood would have stopped at harming her daughters, that Jeremiah Mayhew was a man of his word?

  She didn't give me the opportunity to ask those questions. She instead slung her arms around me and pressed her head against my chest. "We've got to hit the road." She pulled back and smiled at me. "Thanks again, Henry."

  "Think nothing of it," I said as she got into the car and drove off. I suspected that she never would.

  A Note from the Author

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