by Lou Berney
The mark had the room on the second floor that was closest to the middle stairs. Number 207. Seraphine said that the mark would check in around five. Barone couldn’t tell for sure if he was in the room yet or not. A light in the room was on, but the curtains were drawn.
Barone settled in. If he was lucky, the mark would step outside for a breath of fresh air. Some guys didn’t mind doing a hit on the cuff. Barone, no. He liked to be as prepared as possible. Seraphine said the mark was a big boy. Barone wanted to see how big, with his own two eyes.
The mark was an independent contractor from San Francisco, going by the name of Fisk. That was all Barone knew about him. That, and he was good with a scope. Long-range shooters tended to be oddballs. Barone had known one guy, years ago, who could barely tie his shoelaces by himself. But point out a German in the bushes three hundred yards away and pow.
Thirty minutes passed. An hour. Barone yawned, still thinking about the war. In Belgium once he fell asleep in his foxhole while his company waited for the Germans to come out of the woods at them. The sergeant shook Barone awake and asked if he had a screw loose, how calm he was all the time.
Maybe Barone did have a screw loose. He’d considered the possibility. But what if he did? There was nothing he could do about it. You’re born a certain way. You stay that way. Everyone got what they deserved.
It started to rain. The sign for the Bali Hai featured a hula girl with a neon grass skirt that shimmied back and forth. The rain and the light from the sign and the headlights from the cars driving past formed strange shapes on Barone’s windshield, slow, sinuous dancers. He hummed along, Coltrane’s solo from “Cherokee.”
At a quarter till nine, the rain stopped. A minute later the door to 207 opened and the mark, Fisk, stepped out onto the breezeway. A big boy, all right. Seraphine hadn’t exaggerated. Six foot two or three, with a barrel chest and a thick slab of gut that made his arms and legs look spindly. Around fifty years old. He was playing tourist, dressed in a short-sleeved Ban-Lon shirt the color of brown mustard, a pair of checkered slacks.
He lit a cigarette and leaned against the wooden balcony rail. The deep end of the pool was right beneath his room. The reflection rippled over him, the glow shifting. Purple, yellow, green. When he finished the cigarette, he flicked it away and took out a comb. He ran the comb through his thinning hair. A lefty. See? Seraphine hadn’t mentioned that. That was why Barone liked to take his time, gather his own information.
He couldn’t read the mark’s expression from this distance. Fisk didn’t seem jumpy. A strong gust rattled the fronds of the palm tree by the pool, and Fisk barely glanced over. He had a good forty pounds on Barone. Or look at it a different way: Barone had a good forty pounds on him.
Fisk finished combing his hair, inspected the teeth of the comb, and then went back inside.
The pool deserted, the breezeway empty. The hula girl on the sign shimmied. Room 207 had the only second-floor light on down the long leg of the L. No lights on down the short leg. A couple of lights were on below, on the first floor, but those rooms had the curtains pulled.
The motel office faced Old Spanish Trail. From behind the reception desk, the night clerk could see the street, the pool, the short leg of the L, the parking lot. Most of the parking lot. His blind spot was the turn-in from Old Spanish Trail and the northeast corner of the lot.
The dashboard clock ticked. Let Fisk start to worry. Let him get steamed. At a quarter past nine, fifteen minutes late, Barone pulled onto Old Spanish Trail, looped back around, and parked in the northeast corner of the Bali Hai lot. He grabbed the briefcase from the backseat, put the burned-out bulb in the pocket of his suit coat, and climbed the middle stairs. Knock-knock.
The door cracked open. The thinning hair on Fisk’s scalp like the whorls of a thumbprint. He took a long look at Barone. “You have it?”
“What do you think?” Barone said.
Fisk let Barone inside and shut the door behind him. He motioned to the bed with the Police Positive .38 in his hand. “Sit down while I make sure,” Fisk said.
“You have anything to drink?”
“No.”
“Nothing?” Barone said. “Or nothing you want to share with me?”
Fisk popped open the briefcase. He took out the first envelope, ripped it open. Passport. He went over the passport inch by inch, using his thumbnail to pick at the corners.
“How long is this going to take?” Barone said. “I was just supposed to drop the case and fly.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Fisk said.
He set the passport on the nightstand and ripped open the second envelope. Plane ticket. He went over that inch by inch, too, and then reached for the cash. Two fat stacks.
“That was some nice shooting yesterday in Dallas,” Barone said. “How far away were you? Couple hundred yards?”
Fisk stopped counting. He looked up at Barone, a dead, empty stare. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure,” Barone said. “My mistake.”
Fisk held the stare for a while. He had to start the count over again.
Barone waited until Fisk was almost done with the second stack of cash and then stood. “All right, then.”
“Hang on,” Fisk said.
“Happy trails, pardner.”
“You’re light a grand.”
“I don’t know anything about that,” Barone said.
“Ten up front, fifteen when the job was done,” Fisk said. “That was the deal.”
“I’m just the delivery boy.” Barone, out the door and onto the breezeway. “Take it up with management.”
“I said hang on, asshole.”
Barone kept walking. He felt Fisk coming after him, light on his feet for such a big boy. At the top of the stairs, Fisk grabbed for Barone’s shoulder. Barone, ready for the first touch, slipped away and under, two steps to the left, and hit Fisk beneath the chin with the heel of his hand. If Fisk had been a smaller guy, the shot would have knocked his block off. Barone didn’t need to knock his block off. Fisk’s head snapped back and smacked against the wall of the breezeway.
The impact dazed Fisk, his hands floating in front of him. Barone cinched his belt around Fisk’s wrists and kicked his feet out from under him. Down the stairs Fisk tumbled. All that beef, nothing to slow it. Barone had played through every move in his head a hundred times. It was like watching something from the grandstand. Like watching a replay of something that had already happened.
Fisk hit bottom hard. Barone moved down the stairs and retrieved his belt. Fisk lay sprawled on his back. The top half of him looked like he was running left, the bottom half like he was running right. Breathing, just barely. One eye open, the other filled with blood. Barone crouched over him. Careful now. Make sure it looks right, one good pop. Lift the head and crack it like an egg on the edge of a skillet. Barone grabbed Fisk’s ears.
He sensed the knife. Luck, or maybe his guardian angel. Barone just managed to get a hand up, between the knife and his ribs. The blade slid through his palm and out the other side.
No pain yet, just surprise. Barone fought the impulse to jerk his hand away. Jerk your hand away and you give your pal his knife back, you give him a mulligan, another shot. Fisk tried to pull the switchblade free. Barone held on. Now the pain came, building and building, like a band warming up before a show, one instrument at first and then the others joining in. Barone held on. With his good hand, he grabbed Fisk by the hair. Fisk watched him with his blood-filled eye. Barone lifted Fisk’s head and drove it back down. The lights went out.
Barone’s concern now was blood. Yank the blade out of his hand, he’d bleed everywhere. So he left the knife in his hand and went back upstairs. Over the sink in Fisk’s bathroom, he inched the knife out. He rinsed his hand with cold water and wrapped it up in a towel, best he could. He didn’t have time to get too cute.
Everything went into the briefcase. The passport, the plane ticket, the cash, Fisk’s .38, his switchblade.
Take your time. You always have more time than your body thinks you do.
Barone locked the door behind him. He checked the spot in the breezeway where Fisk had smacked his head against the wall. No blood. Good.
He swapped his burned-out bulb for the one in the socket overhead, at the top of the stairs. Whoever found Fisk’s body would think the poor unlucky bastard had tripped in the dark. No one would ever guess how he’d really died, or why.
No blood from Barone’s hand at the bottom of the stairs. Good. He tossed the briefcase in the backseat of the car. He pulled onto Old Spanish Trail. He had to drive with only his left hand, reaching across the steering wheel to work the gearshift and the turn signal. He kept his right hand, wrapped in the towel, pressed between his thighs.
The pain played on, the whole band. Barone ignored it. Carlos had a guy here in Houston, a hophead doctor in the Mexican part of town. A shot, a pill, a proper bandage. That was all Barone needed, and then he’d be ready for the next job.
8
For almost an hour, Charlotte soared. Light-headed, almost giddy. I’m leaving. I have left. The girls picked up on her mood. The three of them sang songs—“On Top of Spaghetti (All Covered with Cheese),” “The Ballad of Davy Crockett”—and counted pumpjacks, horses, cars with out-of-state license plates. The dog, his head in Rosemary’s lap, sighed contentedly and smacked his lips in his sleep.
But then, as they neared Oklahoma City, the full weight of what Charlotte had done dragged her back to earth. I have left. Wax wings melted, Icarus plunged.
Divorce. Until today she’d never really even imagined the possibility of it. Who, in a place like Woodrow, did? You met a man, you married the man, you stayed by his side until one of you died. The kind of women who abandoned their husbands and ran off to Reno or Mexico—those woman lived in seedy big cities, in the pages of a scandal magazine.
When Charlotte’s friends found out what she’d done, they would be appalled. Every single person Charlotte knew would be appalled. Every single person in Woodrow, in other words.
And the sheer number of questions overwhelmed her. Did she need to go to Reno or Mexico to file for divorce? Would she need a lawyer? How much would a lawyer cost? Where would she and the girls live? What would she do to support them?
They’d reached the intersection with Highway 66. It wasn’t too late to turn around. If she turned around now, here, she’d be home well before Dooley stumbled in for the night. She’d be tucked back into her bed, into her life, as if none of this had ever happened.
“Mommy?” Rosemary said. “The light’s green.”
“I know,” Charlotte said. “I just need a minute to think.”
The car behind her honked. The man driving flapped an arm at her, annoyed. Charlotte turned right on 66 and headed west.
“We’re going to visit Aunt Marguerite,” she said, the name popping out of her mouth almost before it had popped into her head. “In California.”
“Who?” said both Rosemary and Joan.
“My aunt,” Charlotte said. “Your great-aunt. My mother’s sister.”
In the rearview mirror, she saw the girls look at each other. The dog lifted his big head, to measure the sudden silence, and then thudded back to sleep.
“You have an aunt,” Rosemary said.
“Yes, of course,” Charlotte said. “I’m sure I’ve mentioned her. Aunt Marguerite. She lives in Los Angeles. In Santa Monica, right by the ocean.”
Or Marguerite had lived there at one point. She’d moved away to California when Charlotte was only six or seven years old and never returned to Oklahoma, not even for a visit. Whenever Charlotte asked her mother why not, her mother would scowl. “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Charlotte’s mother would say. And refuse to discuss the matter further.
Every year Marguerite had sent Charlotte a perfunctory birthday card—no salutation, no message, just Marguerite’s full formal name in a rushed scribble, as if she had a stack of such cards to get through as quickly as possible.
When Charlotte’s mother passed away, five years ago, Marguerite didn’t attend the funeral. The birthday cards had trickled to a stop long before then. The last time Charlotte heard from Marguerite had been … she couldn’t recall exactly. Before she’d married Dooley.
She couldn’t recall Marguerite exactly either. It had been so long ago that Charlotte’s memories were shards of shards that didn’t fit together into any sort of whole. Marguerite wore black. She had very cold hands and never smiled. She was thin as a blade and frighteningly tall, a head taller than Charlotte’s mother. She wore eyeglasses with black cat-eye frames. She said once, to Charlotte’s mother, “Oh, for God’s sake, Dolores.”
Was Marguerite still at the same address? Was she still in California? Was she even still alive? If so, how would she feel when a niece she’d long ago forgotten showed up on her doorstep with two little girls and an epileptic dog?
More questions. Too many questions.
“Let’s sing another song, shall we?” Charlotte said.
“Mommy?” Rosemary said. “How long does it take to get to California?”
“I’m not sure, chickadee.”
“One day?”
“It’s like The Wizard of Oz,” Charlotte said. “We just have to follow the Yellow Brick Road.”
Charlotte didn’t dwell on the irony. The moral of The Wizard of Oz, of course, the lesson that Dorothy finally learned, was that there’s no place like home.
“I want to be the Scarecrow,” Rosemary said. “Joan can be the Tin Man or the Cowardly Lion.”
“Maybe Joan wants to be the Scarecrow,” Charlotte said.
“Joan. Do you want to be the Scarecrow? Or wouldn’t you much rather be the Tin Man or the Cowardly Lion?”
“I can be the Tin Man or the Cowardly Lion,” Joan said.
“See, Mommy?” Rosemary said.
At nine o’clock they stopped for the night in McLean, Texas. Charlotte didn’t want to be out on the road any later than that, and the girls were exhausted. By now Charlotte had begun to fear that she’d made the most rash and disastrous decision of her life. I have left. She needed a kind face, an encouraging word.
Instead she found a sour Baptist pickle behind the motel reception desk. The woman eyed Charlotte. She eyed the girls. She eyed the dog. Charlotte could not be sure which among them the woman found most unwelcome.
“We do not allow dogs,” the woman said. “Under any circumstances.”
“I understand,” Charlotte said.
“You’ll have to leave the dog in the car or find somewhere else to stay.”
“He can sleep in the car,” Charlotte said. “That’s fine.”
“Or find somewhere else to stay,” the woman said. “It’s all the same to me. And we do not allow male visitors. Under any circumstances.”
Really, Charlotte thought. She’d been up since five-thirty that morning and had just driven three and a half hours. Did she look as if she were expecting a male visitor?
“I understand,” Charlotte said.
The woman handed over the room key but kept her grip on the fob. She eyed Charlotte even more sourly than before. “If you lie down with dogs,” she said, “you get up with fleas.”
Their room was cramped and dreary and smelled as if someone had boiled cabbage in the bathroom. Rosemary and Joan had never stayed in a motel before, though, and found every detail of the experience—the tiny bars of soap, the promotional brochure for Indian war dances in Tucumcari—fascinating.
Charlotte showered and then unwrapped the leftover roast-beef sandwiches she’d brought from home. They ate sitting cross-legged on one of the beds.
“Mommy?” Rosemary said. “Lucky doesn’t have fleas.”
“It’s just an expression,” Charlotte said.
“What does it mean?”
“It means … well, I suppose it means that you should choose your friends wisely.”
“Because they might have fleas?” Rosemary said. �
�And the fleas might jump on you and now you have fleas?”
“Something like that,” Charlotte said. “Yes.”
While the girls took their baths, Charlotte buttoned her coat back up, tucked her damp hair down under the collar, and carried the bedspread outside to shake off the crumbs. She fed the dog the other half of her sandwich and walked him in the rutted field behind the motel. She hated the thought of leaving him in the car all night, in the dark and cold and lonely.
The light was off in the motel office, the sour Baptist pickle nowhere to be seen. Charlotte wasn’t in the habit of breaking the rules, but neither was she in the habit of leaving her husband, taking the children, and driving to California. In for a penny, she decided, in for a pound.
“Come on,” she told the dog. “Hurry.”
The dog regarded her dubiously.
“Last chance,” Charlotte warned him.
The girls said their prayers, and Charlotte tucked them in and kissed their foreheads, their noses, their chins. The dog claimed the center of the other bed. Charlotte had to shove him over before she could climb in.
She gave the Esso road map one more quick look, measuring the distances with her thumb. It was more than a thousand miles from McLean to Los Angeles. If they got an early start tomorrow morning and didn’t stop too often along the way, they should reach Gallup, New Mexico, by nightfall. Spend the night there, call Aunt Marguerite. Tuesday would be another long day, another long drive. If all went smoothly, though, they might make it to Santa Monica in time to see the sun sink into the Pacific Ocean.
Charlotte turned off the bedside lamp. Rosemary had begun to snore, but in the darkness Charlotte could hear Joan thinking.
“What is it, sweetie?” Charlotte whispered.
“Are we going to call Daddy?” Joan whispered back.
