November Road

by Lou Berney

  They reached the town at seven o’clock, Monday morning. Goodnight, Texas. Still dark outside. Barone told the kid to park across the street from the little police station.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Barone said.

  “Shoot,” the kid said. “Be back in a minute. What you said last time. A minute.”

  “And then we’ll get some breakfast.”

  “All right,” the kid said.

  Barone stepped out into the cold, damp howling. The Texas panhandle in November. His stitched-up hand felt better, but he still couldn’t close his fingers. It wouldn’t be a problem. He could shoot left-handed if he didn’t have to rush. He shifted the Browning .22 from the one side of his pants to his other, so he’d be able to get to it more cleanly.

  Two cops in the police station, one old and one young. Sheriff and deputy. Sheriff at his desk, boots up. Deputy on the other side of the room, to Barone’s left, filling out some kind of duty roster pinned to a corkboard. A double-barrel shotgun stood propped against the sheriff’s desk, arm’s reach.

  The sheriff nodded. “Mornin’.”

  “Where is he?” Barone said.

  “Over there. In the pokey.”

  One jail cell. A man lay on a cot, bundled under a wool blanket, his face turned to the wall. Barone walked over and watched him through the bars. The man was sleeping or pretending to sleep.

  Barone pointed to the deputy. “Pour me a cup of that coffee, will you?” he said.

  He wanted to move the deputy over by the sheriff, against the same wall. The wall behind the sheriff’s desk displayed a dozen or more paintings of lighthouses and bridges and religious figures. Barone had been in several police stations. Until now he’d never seen a police station with even a single painting in it.

  The deputy looked at the sheriff. The sheriff tilted his head at the coffeepot. The deputy took his time making his way across the room. He wanted to show Barone who was boss.

  Barone whistled at the man in the cell. “Get up,” he said. He saw the blanket stir.

  “My deputy here stopped him yesterday for speeding,” the sheriff said. “Couple miles east of town. Claims his name is Watkins, but he doesn’t have a lick of ID on him. The car he was driving is registered under the name of Watkins, but my suspicion is it’s stolen.”

  “You want cream or sugar, you can come get it for yourself,” the deputy told Barone. He set the mug down on the table, full of himself.

  Barone whistled again, louder. The man in the cell was just pretending to sleep. “Get up,” Barone told him.

  The man sat up and yawned and wrapped the blanket more snugly around him. “Let me out of here,” he said. “I don’t know who the hell you are, but I ain’t whoever the hell these dumb sons of bitches think I am.”

  The man wasn’t Guidry. Barone needed one look.

  “Well?” the sheriff asked Barone. “Is that your boy?”

  “My damn name is Melvin Watkins. I don’t know who the hell you’re looking for. I live in Clarendon, Texas, eighteen miles east of here. Go to Clarendon and ask the first person you meet. They’ll tell you.”

  Barone didn’t lose his temper very often. But eight hours of driving, eight hours wasted. And now another eight hours back to Houston. He took out the Browning .22 and pointed it at the man in the cell. Barone heard the sheriff’s boots hit the floor, his chair scrape back as he stood.

  “Now, hold on there, son,” the sheriff said.

  The man in the cell stared at Barone, eyes about to pop out of his head. He was the same age and height as Guidry, with close to the same hair and coloring. He even had a slight slant to his eyes. Part Indian, probably. Dark eyes, not light, but Barone supposed he could see how someone could have made an honest mistake.

  Barone put the gun away. “It’s not him,” he said.

  The man in the cell blinked. The deputy stood frozen with his mug in one hand and the coffeepot in the other. The sheriff slowly eased himself back down into his chair.

  “You’re sure?” the sheriff said.

  Barone had been burning up a second ago. Now he felt as cold as ice. “It’s not him,” he said.

  “We didn’t have a picture of him to go by,” the sheriff said. “But they told me to err on the side of caution, your people in Dallas.”

  “You sure it ain’t him?” the deputy said, piping up. “Take another look if you need it.”

  The sheriff turned to glare at the deputy, and then he turned back to Barone. “I know you’ve come a long way,” the sheriff told Barone. “I apologize for the inconvenience.”

  Barone walked back to the car. The kid drove a few blocks up until Barone spotted a diner. The kid ordered scrambled eggs and bacon and sausage patties and biscuits with gravy and a short stack of silver-dollar pancakes. Side-eyeing Barone the whole time like he was daring Barone to say something.

  “And a big glass of chocolate milk,” the kid said.

  “We only got regular milk,” the waitress said.

  “Not even none of that chocolate powder you can mix in with it?”

  “We got regular milk.”

  The waitress wasn’t too happy to have a colored kid sitting at her counter. Barone could see the pinch to her face. More than likely she called herself a Christian and went to church every Sunday morning.

  They were the only ones in the place. After the breakfast crowd, before the lunch crowd. The radio played a live report from Washington, D.C. A procession of world leaders following Kennedy’s coffin from the White House to St. Matthew’s Cathedral.

  The kid worked through his breakfast and couldn’t find anything to gripe about. Barone ate a runny fried egg and drank two cups of black coffee. He was hot all over again. The flu. A bad time to come down with it, but he’d had the flu before and it had never killed him.

  The waitress came back over. “It’s a National Day of Mourning. But ask me if I got to work anyway.”

  “You finished?” Barone asked the kid.

  “Shoot,” the kid said. “White man gets shot, it’s National Day of Mourning. Colored man gets shot, it’s Monday morning.”

  “Good Lord, how can you eat so much and be so skinny?” the waitress said. She gave the kid a friendly poke with her elbow as she piled up his plates. Maybe Barone had her figured wrong. “Y’all headed to Amarillo for that car auction?”

  “No,” Barone said.

  She started to walk away.

  “Wait,” he said. “Come back here.”

  “More coffee?” the waitress said.

  Barone put his hand over the top of his cup. “Why did you ask that? About the car auction?”

  “That’s where the other fella was headed,” she said. “The one what come through yesterday. We don’t get many folks from out of town, so I thought you might be headed to that car auction, too.”

  Maybe the man she was talking about was the man in the cell. But the sheriff said his deputy had picked up Melvin Watkins a few miles east of town. The diner was on the west side of town. Amarillo was west of town. Maybe the sheriff had made another honest mistake.

  “What did he look like?” Barone said.

  “The fella yesterday?” the waitress said. “I don’t know. He was real friendly.”

  “Handsome.”

  She blushed. “I suppose.”

  Barone hadn’t thought to wonder about it earlier, how the county deputy didn’t recognize a man from just the next town over. Recognize his name, at least. Or how the sheriff wouldn’t just call over to Clarendon and check. Barone had been too busy being mad that the man in the cell wasn’t Guidry.

  “He had dark brown eyes,” Barone said. “Like mine.”

  “Brown? No. His was green as glass.” She blushed again. “I don’t know. Maybe they was brown. Can I get y’all anything else?”

  When Barone walked back into the police station, Melvin Watkins had been released from the cell but was still hanging around, drinking coffee and having a laugh about something with the deputy. Th
e sheriff was shrugging on his quilted jacket, about to head home.

  Barone shot the deputy before the deputy could even think about reaching for the pistol on his hip. The shot yanked a piece of his head away and slapped it across the paintings on the wall. The sheriff had time to grab for his pistol but not time to draw it. Barone shot him twice in the stomach. Firing left-handed, he had to concentrate. The sheriff slid down the wall and sat with his legs splayed out in front of him, his cowboy hat bumped crooked.

  Melvin Watkins had his hands high up over his head and was talking so fast that Barone could barely understand him. Barone stuffed the Browning .22 in his pants and took the gun out of the deputy’s holster. A Colt Trooper revolver.

  “Sheriff called me and said he needed somebody looked like some fella,” Melvin Watkins said. “I didn’t want to do it, but Sheriff said he’d haul me in if I didn’t, and I don’t have no idea why—”

  Barone shot him with the deputy’s gun. He went over to the sheriff and stood over him, careful not to put a shoe in the blood pooling out. The sheriff was trying to slide his gun out of the holster but was too weak to do it, both his hand and the gun grip slick with blood.

  Tough bastard. Looking up at Barone, looking him right in the eye, not about to beg.

  “Did he pay you off?” Barone said.

  “Go to hell,” the sheriff said.

  “How much?” Barone said. “It wasn’t enough, whatever he paid you. Did he say where he was headed?”

  “Go … to … hell.” Each word was like the sheriff dragging a dead body out of the river and up onto the bank. “Every … damn one … of you.”

  “He got you killed. Look around, all this. Frank Guidry did it, not me. Don’t you want me to find him and send your regards?”

  The sheriff hissed and gurgled and finally gave up trying to draw his pistol. “Don’t … know where,” he said.

  “Headed west?” Barone said.

  The sheriff jerked his chin. Yes.

  “What else?”

  “Dodge,” the sheriff said. “Blue over … white.”

  “Old one or new?”

  “A ’57 or … a ’58. Dodge … Coronet.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Few … hours ago.”

  Maybe Guidry would ditch the car, but maybe he wouldn’t. Guidry would think that his plan had worked, that Barone had taken the bait and was headed back to Houston right now. He’d think that Barone would get on the phone with Seraphine and tell her that Goodnight had been a wild-goose chase.

  “What else?” Barone said.

  The sheriff jerked his chin. Nothing else.

  “Why do you have all these paintings on the wall?” Barone said.

  “Go … to … hell,” the sheriff said.

  Barone switched over to the Browning again. He stepped back so the spray wouldn’t catch him and shot the sheriff in the head. He put the Browning in Melvin Watkins’s hand and the deputy’s gun in the deputy’s hand and then moved around the shell casings to match. No, it wouldn’t fool every Texas Ranger in the state, but it might fool the ones assigned to the case. At the very least, they’d need some time to scratch their heads.

  He wiped down everything in the cell that Guidry might have touched. Barone had on gloves, so he wasn’t worried about his prints.

  The kid had fallen asleep when Barone got back to the car. Barone elbowed him awake.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “You find out what you need this time?” the kid said. “Or we gonna have to turn around and come back again?”

  “Let’s go,” Barone said.

  What about the waitress? Barone thought about it. No. Lunch started soon. Customers. And he couldn’t spare the time to wait around and take care of her after she got off work. He would have to let it go. Guidry was waiting for him.

  14

  Only now, one o’clock in the afternoon and four hundred miles from Goodnight, four hundred miles from his almost certain doom, did Guidry finally begin to breathe a little easier. He pulled off the highway in the town of Santa Maria, New Mexico. Town? The cluster of buildings on the endless grassy plain looked like a patch of stubble a man missed while shaving.

  When Guidry got out of the car, his knees were still jelly. That was a close call, brother. Do you understand just how close?

  Why, yes, in fact I do.

  The only motel in town was the Old Mexico Motor Court. Guidry went into the office and asked for a room. The boy behind the counter didn’t give him a second glance.

  “We have casitas,” the boy said. “That’s what I’m s’posed to call ’em.”

  “Is a casita the same as a room?” Guidry said.

  “Yes.”

  “Well then,” Guidry said, “I’m sold.”

  The boy wrote down the name that Guidry gave him. Frank Wainwright. He still didn’t give Guidry a second glance. Guidry made sure, watching the boy closely. After what had happened back in Goodnight, he would have to keep his guard up. Who could say how many people between here and Las Vegas had been instructed to keep an eye out for him? For a man traveling solo, late thirties, medium height and weight, dark hair and green eyes, a dimple in the middle of his chin that made all the chicks swoon?

  Who could say how many people in Vegas had been instructed to keep an eye out for him? Vegas was a company town. Word would get around. Guidry would have to sweat about every busboy and showgirl who glanced at him.

  Seraphine would guess that he was headed to Vegas or Miami. Maybe Los Angeles. Definitely not Chicago or New York. How to keep her guessing? That was the question.

  The hot water in the shower trickled out, and the towel could have sanded the faces off Mount Rushmore. Guidry had grown weary of shitty accommodations, of motel rooms and jail cells and casitas. He’d had enough of them these past few days to last a lifetime.

  His emptied his bowels. Eighteen months in the Pacific and not a hint of dysentery. When just about every other GI in his company had succumbed.

  On TV the funeral procession unspooled. There was Jackie, gaunt and wobbly, stupefied. Guidry knew just how she felt. Three days ago her world had been shipshape and right side up. The future had cast a rosy glow.

  He napped for a couple of hours. The motel clerk gave him change for a dollar. He dropped the first dime in the pay phone and dialed up his old pal Klaus in Miami. Klaus, the sneakiest, squirrelliest, most reliably untrustworthy ex-Catholic ex-Commie ex-Nazi in the Western Hemisphere. He worked for Santo Trafficante but sold information to anyone who could pay for it.

  “Klausie baby,” Guidry said.

  “Ja. What?” Klaus said. And then, realizing, “Oh. This is Guidry?”

  “Can you talk? Are you alone?”

  “Ja. Sure. Guidry. Hello, hello, old chum.” Klaus recovered from his surprise and spotted the opportunity immediately. He unhinged his jaw and slithered toward Guidry as fast as he could. “It is a pleasure, old chum.”

  “Klausie, can I count on your discretion?” Guidry said.

  “Ja, of course.”

  “I need a change of scenery. You understand. Somewhere warm and tropical.”

  You had to believe your own lie. You had to get inside it. Guidry had known a cute little actress once. She was in Hollywood now, a second-fiddle femme fatale on some third-rate TV show. She said once that you couldn’t expect to fool the audience if you couldn’t fool yourself. Nobody needed to tell Guidry that.

  “I’ve got my ride lined up already,” Guidry said. “A guy I served with overseas, my old staff sergeant, he runs a fishing charter out of the Keys now. He’s a prick, through and through, but I think I can trust him, and he has a boat that can get me to Honduras.”

  Guidry could picture the guy, could picture the boat, could smell the salt breeze. “I need paper, though,” he said. “And a couple of introductions once I get down south.”

  “You are in Miami now?” Klaus said.

  “None of your beeswax where I am now, Klausie.” M
ake him work for it, a little bit at least. “Can you help with the paper? I’ll pay. And you’ve got some old Kamaraden down in the jungle, haven’t you?”

  Klaus could get touchy when you brought up his wartime attachments. Not this time. He fell all over himself. “Ja, ja, of course, Guidry. I can help you. It is my pleasure, old chum.”

  Guidry told Klaus he’d be in touch soon, to set the meet in Miami, and then hung up. Seraphine would be skeptical when Klaus called her—under normal circumstances Guidry would never put his life in the hands of a man like Klaus. But these, old chum, were not normal circumstances. Guidry was a desperate man. Seraphine knew it. She would have to water this seed of possibility, watch it, see if it bloomed.

  The next call, the real call. Las Vegas. Why would Seraphine believe that Guidry might put his life in the hands of a man like Klaus? Because Guidry was about to put his life in the hands of a man like Big Ed Zingel.

  A man with an English accent answered the phone. “Good afternoon. The Zingel residence.”

  “Put Ed on,” Guidry said.

  “Mr. Zingel isn’t in. Would you care to leave a message?”

  “Tell him that Mr. Marcello from New Orleans would like to ask him for a favor,” Guidry said, “for old times’ sake.”

  He hung up. It was raining again, an Old Testament deluge. He waited out the storm in his room and then walked into town.

  Santa Maria, New Mexico. Get a load of this place. A little toy town, like something a kid would play with on Christmas morning. Like a color drawing in a magazine ad selling margarine. Two teenage girls strolled along the sidewalk, their ponytails bouncing. One girl’s poodle skirt was decorated with polka dots, the other’s with daisies. It was 1955 all over again, and someone had failed to inform Guidry.

  He counted three churches in two blocks. A couple of teenage boys in leather jackets, skulking on the corner, smiled and said hello. Even the hoods here in Our Town were well mannered.

  Guidry found a “department store” that had one department: everything. The selection of men’s attire was what he’d anticipated. He bought two pairs of synthetic slacks (“Dacron,” ye gods) and two pairs of cheap Florsheims and a houndstooth sport coat. The sport coat was an inch short in the sleeves and too big everywhere else. And, for the topper, a gray wool fedora with a clashing houndstooth pattern.