November Road

by Lou Berney

  He crossed his legs. He draped the arm with the bandaged hand over the back of the chair. He rested the gun on his knee, the barrel angled casually at a spot a few feet to her left.

  He wasn’t nervous. Why was he sweating? He wasn’t drunk either.

  “You understand what happens if you give me any trouble?” he said.

  She forced herself to ignore the gun. She concentrated on the nodding toe of his black oxford. The girls, the girls, the girls. What if Rosemary had one of her nightmares and could not be consoled? Joan knew what to do. Let’s go get Mommy. What if Joan woke with a tummyache? Rosemary knew what to do. Let’s go get Mommy. She’s just across the hall.

  A soft, tentative knock on the door. Any minute now. The man would turn. Charlotte would scream as loud as she could. Run! She’d throw herself at the man and grab for his gun and keep screaming. Run!

  Would they? Would the girls run? Almost every decision that Rosemary and Joan made together required much discussion. How many times had she come across them whispering, their heads together, deliberating like a pair of lawyers in the courtroom? Charlotte’s scream might blast them into action, or it might freeze them in place.

  She wouldn’t live long enough to find out which. She would die without knowing if they were safe or not.

  “You understand what happens if you give me any trouble?” the man said again.

  She looked up at him. “Let me go,” she said. “Please. I’m leaving. I’ve already packed my bags. Whatever it is, whatever you want with Frank or with Ed, I don’t have anything to do with it. I … I don’t care.”

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” But the man said it only after a pause, as if he were an actor prodded from offstage to deliver a line required of him.

  “Please,” she said. “Let me go.”

  His shoulders sagged. His eyes softened. What was happening to him? One time Charlotte had taken a chocolate cake from the oven too soon, an early poor effort, and watched it slump in on itself before her eyes.

  The man managed to steady himself. He straightened back up. He didn’t drop the gun.

  “Ted?” he said.

  “No,” she said. “His name is Ed. I don’t know his last name. He’s Frank’s friend.”

  A shiver rippled through the man. Rippled away. Color, a little, returned to his cheeks and his lips.

  “You’re ill,” Charlotte said. “You have a fever.”

  “I’ve been worse,” he said.

  “My name is Charlotte. What’s your name?”

  She knew that it was hopeless. He looked at her the same way he looked at the goosenecked lamp on the desk or the glass ashtray on the nightstand or the blank wall behind her.

  “If anyone asks me,” she said, “I’ll swear that I never saw you.”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “Would you like me to bring you a glass of water?”

  What could she do? The girls, the girls, the girls. The knock on the door, any second now. What would happen when Frank returned?

  “Where are your kids?” he said.

  Now the shiver rippled through her. He could read her mind. No. She remembered that she’d told him about the girls, even before he entered the room. So stupid. She’d been so stupid from the beginning.

  “I said where are your kids?”

  “Downstairs,” Charlotte said. “In the nursery.”

  “The nursery’s closed.”

  He didn’t know if the nursery was closed or not. But Charlotte realized it too late. He caught her initial hesitation.

  “Are they next door?” he said. “Across the hall?”

  “What happened to your hand? I have aspirin in my purse.” Anything to change the subject. “Is Frank Wainwright his real name? He told me that he sold insurance in New York. I’m so stupid.”

  The man uncrossed his legs and planted his black oxfords on the carpet. He braced his elbow against the back of the chair but managed to lift himself only a few inches before he sank down again. Charlotte thought he might set his gun on the floor or the dresser, so that he could use his good hand to pull himself up. He didn’t, though, and when he tried a second time to stand, he succeeded.

  “Toss it here,” he said.

  “What?” she said.

  “The aspirin.”

  She unsnapped her purse. The stack of photos, an emery board, a box of matches, her compact and lipstick, a room key attached to a diamond-shaped plastic tag. Nothing that Charlotte could use as a weapon. A stick of gum. Rosemary’s beloved Rickshaw Racer, a snap-together toy from a box of Rice Krinkles.

  “Toss it here,” he said.

  He caught the bottle between his bandaged hand and his chest. He unscrewed the lid with his teeth. He shook tablets into his mouth and chewed them.

  “I can bring you a glass of water,” he said.

  “Let’s go see your kids.”

  He might have said something else, too, but Charlotte didn’t hear it. For a moment she went deaf. Just a thin, whining buzz in her ears, growing louder and louder, the steam pressure building and building. How long, after your heart had stopped beating, could you stay alive?

  “No,” she said.

  “Take me to your room,” he said. “We’re going to wait for Frank there.”

  “We can wait here.”

  “Don’t you want to be with your kids?”

  He was going to murder her and the girls. Charlotte knew that without a doubt. She could see it. Could see the gleam of porcelain and tile and mirrored glass. Rosemary’s lifeless body in the bathtub. Joan’s lifeless body nestled against her. Two peas in a pod. The plastic shower curtain torn from its rings. Charlotte’s own lifeless body on the floor. The sink faucet running and a man’s hand cupping the water.

  Charlotte saw exactly what the man with the gun saw. It was as if the two of them stood side by side at a window, gazing out together at the future they would share.

  “Get up,” he said.

  “No,” Charlotte said.

  He lifted the gun and pointed it at her. She panicked. She came apart at the seams. The girls, the girls, the girls. And yet, at the same time, something more powerful than panic held her still, calmed her mind, emptied it of every fear, every dread, every distraction.

  Let him shoot her. The girls would hear the gunshot, but so would the other people in this wing of the hotel. Someone would call the front desk, the police. The man would have to flee. He knew that. That was why he didn’t want to shoot her. He wanted to take her across the hall and keep everything quiet. He expected Charlotte to keep the girls quiet for him. Shhh, he expected her to tell them. It’s all right, he’s not going to hurt us.

  “Get up now,” he said.

  She knew that he would shoot her. She didn’t care. Charlotte saw him for what he was: a weak man, powerless to move her as long as she refused to budge.

  And she could do that. She had not a doubt in her mind.

  “How did you hurt your hand?” she said.

  “Get up or else,” he said. “I won’t tell you again.”

  “Do you have someone?”

  “Do I have someone?”

  “A wife. A girlfriend. Someone who can take care of your hand.”

  He was unsteady on his feet. Sweating, shivering. She watched as it began to happen again—the sag, the swoon, his fever bursting into fresh bloom. He watched, too. They stood side by side at their window and looked into the future together. His eyes glazing, his knees buckling, the gun slipping from his grasp and thudding to the carpet.

  “You’re very ill,” she said. “Don’t you think you should sit down again?”

  He set the gun on the dresser. And then he was across the room, two startlingly swift strides—he was standing above her, he had his hand around her throat, he’d shoved her backward onto the bed. The weight of him astonished her. A thousand crushing pounds falling from the sky. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to twist away, but that made it worse. Her throat. The steady crushing strength of
his fingers astonished her. He’d pinned her shoulders. She couldn’t breathe and she couldn’t move. Her vision started to warp and pulse.

  “Shit,” he said. His voice in her ear. She smelled the aspirin on his breath. She smelled the sweet, rotten tang of the dirty bandage. His sweat dripped down and stung her eyes. “Shit.”

  Because he’d begun to float. That’s what it felt like. Like he was lifting slowly away from her, all that weight, ounce by ounce, flakes of ashes scattered by the breeze. He struggled to hold on. He shivered, his eyes glazed.

  She could move one arm now, just a little. What was she searching for? She didn’t know. His gun, tucked into his waistband. No. He’d left the gun on the dresser. He was too smart.

  Ounce by ounce, flake by flake, he lifted away, the pressure on her throat easing. The fever had taken him again. But not far enough, too slowly. She still couldn’t breathe.

  Her searching hand was trapped now—tangled in a pocket, the pocket of his suit coat. She touched a smooth wooden handle. She touched a steel shaft attached to the handle, slender as a needle. The sharp tip pricked the pad of her index finger.

  She gripped the wooden handle, and then with the rest of the life left in her she thrust the ice pick into his side. Into his stomach? His thigh? Between his ribs? She didn’t know. She didn’t know if he even felt it. His breathing quickened slightly, but that might have been the fever and nothing else.

  And then she felt his grip on her neck go slack. He slid off her, turning to recline languidly on his side, head resting on his arm. She didn’t know if he was alive or dead. He might have been a man just waking from a nap, about to open his eyes and yawn, if not for the dark stain spreading out from beneath his belly.

  She rolled off the bed and stumbled to her feet. Her throat was on fire. She had to learn how to breathe again. In, out. She was alive. She was fairly sure of that.

  She found her purse and closed the door of Frank’s room behind her. At some point, soon, all this would overwhelm her. Whatever black magic that Charlotte was using to keep away the panic, the fear, the horror—soon it would vanish with a thunderclap, and in the flood that came afterward she’d be lost for hours, for days, she’d not be able to remember her own name or put one foot in front of the other.

  Soon, but not yet.

  32

  Guidry forced himself to drive the limit. Steady Eddie, sticking to his lane and signaling well in advance of every turn. He forced his mind to slow down, too. Take your time. Look at the big picture. Don’t miss anything.

  Ed’s house was in the middle of nowhere. Good. No nosy neighbors, no visitors dropping by for a chat or a cup of sugar. Cindy’s friends wouldn’t call the cops. Those kids had been around, they understood how the world worked. If they hadn’t bolted already, they would scatter when they sniffed the shit they were in.

  So Guidry had time. Ed’s housekeeper wouldn’t report to work and find the bodies until tomorrow morning. Or maybe Ed didn’t employ a housekeeper. Maybe it was Leo who’d mopped the floors and scrubbed the toilets and fished the golden hair of youth out of the drains. And that indignity was why he’d turned on Ed and made his grab for the brass ring.

  Guidry didn’t take it personally. Leo saw his chance and jumped. But Guidry needed to know if Leo had negotiated a price for him in advance. He hoped Leo had been acting on impulse when he pulled the trigger, because if not …

  Had Leo talked to someone about Guidry? Did he spill the beans that Guidry was at the Hacienda? A good-faith gesture, proof that Leo had the golden goose in hand?

  No. Leo wouldn’t do that. Giving up Guidry’s whereabouts would’ve made him disposable. Leo wouldn’t have cut himself out of his own deal. Guidry hoped not.

  He checked the speedometer. The needle had begun to creep. Easy, now. He’d be at the Hacienda in ten minutes. He’d have Charlotte and the girls packed up in twenty. He’d have them in the car and the car back on the road and the road singing beneath the tires all before the blood on the floor of Ed’s library had stopped steaming.

  They had to get out of Vegas. Not too far out of Vegas. A motel in one of the little dried-out desert towns that littered Highway 90 like molted snake skins, a safe place where they could wait out the day.

  A day was all they needed. Because Ed might be dead, but Colonel Butch Tolliver, degenerate gambler, was still alive. His plane would still fly out of Nellis tomorrow evening at seven o’clock, with Guidry and Charlotte and the girls aboard.

  Why wouldn’t it? Colonel Butch had been paid up front, Guidry assumed, and wasn’t waiting for Ed to give the go-ahead. Ed would have used a cutout to make the arrangements. Probably Colonel Butch didn’t even know from where in heaven his bread was falling.

  Guidry glanced at the manila envelope in the seat next to him. The paperwork was clean an hour ago. With luck it would remain that way.

  You’re staying here tonight. You’ll be safer.

  Ed’s last words. Guidry hadn’t pondered them until now. What did they mean? Maybe that Seraphine had tracked Guidry to the Hacienda. Maybe that Guidry’s time, if he didn’t turn the car around right now, was already up.

  He didn’t turn the car around. The girls would be asleep already. It was almost ten-thirty. Guidry would carry them to the car, one on each hip, the way he’d carried them that first night in Flagstaff. He could still feel the dense warmth of them, Rosemary’s soft cheek against his rough one, Joan’s breath on his neck. He could still see Charlotte, at the top of the steps, smiling down at him.

  Guidry remembered the first time she smiled at him. He remembered the first time he made her laugh. The diner in Santa Maria, Pat Boone on the jukebox, not long after Guidry had launched his devious scheme. The laugh started in her eyes, and in that first spark he caught a glimpse of her from beginning to end, her past and present and future, the little girl she’d been and the old woman that one day she’d become.

  This is going to work, he remembered thinking. I hope this works.

  What kind of father would he be? What kind of husband? A lousy one, Guidry had to admit, let’s be honest. He knew nothing about being a father and a husband. But he planned to give it everything he had, everything. That was a price he was prepared to pay.

  And who could say? Maybe twenty or thirty or forty years from now, Guidry would look back at the man he’d once been, that sharp-dressed fella sitting in the Carousel Bar at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans, and barely recognize him, just some old acquaintance whose name he could no longer recall.

  The southern end of Las Vegas Boulevard. The runway lights of McCarran just ahead. Across the street reared the Hacienda’s neon cowboy on his bucking bronco, waving hello, good-bye, hello, good-bye. Guidry parked as far from the sign as he could get, in the darkest, most deserted corner of the lot.

  You’re staying here tonight. You’ll be safer.

  Guidry realized that he had it wrong. Those hadn’t been Ed’s last words. Ed’s last words had been, Leo! Wake up, for God’s sake!

  The girls had left their Disney book in the backseat. True-life adventures of the creatures who lurked and maneuvered in darkness. Secrets of the Hidden World.

  He stashed Ed’s gun in the glove box and went straight up to Charlotte’s room. He knocked lightly. How the hell was he going to sell her this late-night, last-minute dash?

  He knocked again. To calm his nerves, he picked out a place for them to live in Saigon. A cream-colored town house with tall, arched windows and wrought-iron balconies, on a cobbled lane shaded by palms. He didn’t know if the streets were cobbled in Saigon, and his imaginary town house bore a suspicious resemblance to one on Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans. But Indochina had been a French colony, had it not? So maybe.

  A garden in back where the girls could read and play and spread out a blanket for picnics, with a little bubbling fountain and the bougainvillea spilling over the stone wall like foam over the lip of a beer mug.

  He tried the knob. Unlocked. Guidry didn’t turn it
. As long as he didn’t open the door and step inside, as long as he didn’t switch on the light and see with his own eyes the empty beds, the naked hangers, the missing suitcases, he could continue to pretend that Charlotte and the girls were still here.

  But he knew they were gone. Of course they were gone. That last kiss. Good-bye, Frank. Guidry had known right then what was happening, but he’d just refused to believe it. Of course Charlotte was saying good-bye. She was too smart to stick around, to trust a man like him a second time. It was one of the reasons he’d fallen for her in the first place.

  Though maybe Rosemary hadn’t been able to sleep and the three of them had trekked down to the café for cookies and warm milk. Maybe they were on their way back to the room right this minute… .

  Oh, the power of self-deception. What superhuman strength, what feats of derring-do.

  He opened the door, switched on the light. Beds empty, hangers naked, suitcases missing. Of course Charlotte and the girls were gone. Of course.

  Guidry thought he’d prepared himself for the pain. No. Not even close. He’d expected a blow, a blast, a ripping, and a tearing. Hunker down, weather the storm, let it pass. Instead the pain inside him was like a dark tide, rising inch by inch, with nothing to contain it but the far edge of his life on earth.

  He didn’t bother going back to his own room. He could buy a new toothbrush. If Charlotte had left him a note, he didn’t want to read it.

  In the hotel lobby, a bellhop noticed Guidry.

  “Mr. Wainwright,” the bellhop said. “I wondered where you were. I loaded the ladies into a cab to the bus depot, half an hour ago. They were in some rush. You better …”

  And then the bellhop put two and two together. Oops. He realized that poor Mr. Wainwright had been abandoned.

  “Oh, jeez, Mr. Wainwright,” he said, “I just figured …”

  “Don’t worry, Johnny, I’m meeting them there.” Guidry gave the poor kid a reassuring smile. “Life couldn’t be peachier.”

  Guidry walked across the parking lot. Made it all the way to his car with the smile on his face, the tide of pain rising, rising.