November Road

by Lou Berney

  “Frank.”

  From the shadows emerged a man, his face so white it seemed to glow. A ghost. Maybe Cindy had been right about the afterlife after all.

  “You’ve got me confused with someone else, friend,” Guidry said.

  The ghost stopped ten feet away and lifted a gun. Guidry felt relief, not fear. Charlotte and the girls were safe. They’d escaped Guidry in the nick of time. Only he and he alone, right now, was going to die. Any grievance that Guidry might have had against God and the universe was instantly forgiven.

  “Car,” the ghost said.

  Guidry didn’t understand. “What?”

  “The car.”

  “You want the car?” Guidry said. “Help yourself.”

  “Get in. You drive.”

  Now Guidry got it. Somewhere out in the desert, a hole had been dug for him, his grave awaited. Well, forgive him if he declined to make his killer’s job easier.

  “Forget it,” Guidry said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  The ghost moved slowly around to the passenger side. A breath, a step. A breath, a step. At first Guidry thought he was missing his right hand, but no, the hand was just slipped between the buttons of his suit coat. The ghost was hugging himself, bent over like he had a stomachache, but he kept the gun on Guidry.

  “You work for Carlos?” Guidry said.

  “What do you think?”

  “Who killed you?”

  “What?”

  “You look like a ghost.”

  The ghost managed to get the passenger door open. The dome light clicked on and lit him up. He looked worse than any ghost. Guidry doubted there was a drop of blood left in him.

  “Are you Paul Barone?” Guidry said.

  “What do you think? Get in.”

  In the confines of the car, Guidry might be able to wrestle the gun away from him. Or might be able to get to Ed’s gun in the glove box. What, though, was the point?

  “I told you,” Guidry said. “I’m not driving you anywhere.”

  “New Orleans,” Barone said.

  “What?”

  “Get in. You drive.”

  “You want me to drive you to New Orleans?” Guidry said.

  Barone wasn’t making any sense. He tried to climb into the car but slipped and fell to one knee. When he tried to pull himself up, he slipped again and dropped the gun. He stayed down on his knee this time, head bowed, like he was praying.

  Guidry came around to the other side of the car. He kicked the gun away. He saw that the bottom half of Barone’s shirt was soaked with blood, the front flaps of his suit coat soaked, too, his trousers soaked all the way to the crotch.

  He really was missing a hand. That’s what Guidry thought at first—a bloody stump hooked onto the door handle. But then he realized that the stump was a hand wrapped in a bloody bandage, fingers with bloody fingernails poking out the top.

  Barone didn’t look up at Guidry. His breathing sounded like a dead leaf scraping down the sidewalk when a breeze blew.

  “I’m going to kill her,” Barone said.

  Guidry considered again how close to the fire he’d dragged Charlotte and the girls. It was unforgivable. He was unforgivable.

  “Too late,” he said. “You’re out of luck.”

  “She tipped you,” Barone said.

  Guidry crouched so that he could hear him better. But he kept his distance. If this was Barone, or someone like Barone, he might have a last sting left in his tail.

  “What did you say?” Guidry said.

  “She tipped you in Houston,” Barone said. “She tipped you here.”

  “Who?”

  “She knew what she was doing. Bitch. All along.”

  Guidry realized that Barone had to be talking about Seraphine. The guy was off his rocker. “Seraphine never said a word to me,” Guidry said. “Not here, not in Houston.”

  “I’m going to kill her,” Barone said.

  “You’re not going to make it out of this parking lot,” Guidry said.

  Barone seemed to know it. Head hanging lower and lower, breath barely scraping along. “Carlos will find you,” he said. “He always does.”

  “Long may he search,” Guidry said.

  “If he can’t find you, he’ll go after her. He knows how to hurt you now.”

  Seraphine had been trying to kill Guidry for the past week and a half. He lacked much sympathy for her.

  “Seraphine’s not my problem,” Guidry said. “I’ll be just fine.”

  “Not her,” Barone said.

  “Who then?”

  Finally Barone turned his head to regard Guidry. Stick a few gallons of blood back into him and he’d look like half the guys Guidry had served with overseas. He’d look like half the guys in New Orleans. Just another one of Carlos’s boys. Guidry had probably bumped shoulders with him a dozen times.

  “The woman,” Barone said. “Her kids. Carlos knows how to hurt you now.”

  For a second, Guidry’s lungs wouldn’t fill. His heart wouldn’t pump. He could feel all the machinery inside him seize, the belts shredding and the gears grinding.

  Charlotte. The girls.

  Barone had tailed Guidry to the Hacienda. He’d seen Charlotte and the girls. Which meant that he’d probably told Carlos about Charlotte and the girls.

  “Carlos can’t hurt me,” Guidry said.

  “You know he doesn’t like to lose,” Barone said. Not a warning, not a threat. Just a fact so plain and obvious to both of them that it hardly needed to be said. “Help me up.”

  “The woman’s nothing to me.”

  “Help me up,” Barone said. “Get in the car. You drive. New Orleans.”

  “Carlos will never find them,” Guidry said. “He doesn’t know her name. You don’t know her name. They’ll be fine.”

  Barone didn’t answer. Dead, finally. He let go of the door handle, one bloody finger at a time, and sank to the pavement.

  That night Guidry stayed in Henderson, half an hour south of Las Vegas, at a motel attached to a bowling alley. Guidry’s room shared a wall with the bowling alley. He lay in bed, listening to the whunk of the ball hitting the lane and then a couple of seconds later the sharp ceramic clatter of flying pins. Whunk! Crash! Over and over again.

  That wasn’t what kept him awake till the wee hours, though, the whunk and the crash. What kept him awake was the stretch of silence in between, the anticipation, the wait for the other shoe to drop.

  Whunk.

  Charlotte and the girls would be fine. Carlos had no way to track them down. Sure, he’d send someone out to the Hacienda to nose around. But all the employees there assumed that Charlotte’s last name was Wainwright.

  Crash!

  Whunk.

  The bellman knew that Charlotte had taken a cab to the bus depot. The cashier at the bus depot might remember Charlotte, too, might remember the attractive lady with the two well-behaved little girls who’d bought a ticket on the late bus to Los Angeles.

  Crash!

  Whunk.

  But so what? Charlotte was a needle and Los Angeles was the biggest haystack on the West Coast. Though it was possible that someone might recognize Charlotte at both the bus depot in Las Vegas and the bus depot in downtown L.A., and then …

  Crash!

  Sleep came. Dreams came. A dream strange in that there was nothing too strange about it. Guidry was back at the Monteleone, talking to old Mackey Pagano again. The same conversation they’d already had.

  I’m in a bind, Frankie. I might be in a real bind.

  I’m sorry, Mack.

  A new dream bled into the old one. Guidry was a kid again, fifteen years old. He knew exactly how old because he stood on the sagging porch of the shitty little house in St. Amant saying good-bye to Annette. She was eleven years old when he left home for New Orleans. Two months later, Christmas Eve, their father got drunker than usual, felt meaner than usual, and beat her to death with the fireplace poker. Normally their father used the fireplace poker on Guidry,
but Guidry was no longer around—he’d hightailed it to the big city and saved himself.

  Why you gotta go, Frick?

  Sorry, Frack. I’ll send for you when I have a big, fancy house.

  Guidry had returned to visit that moment every single day for the past twenty-two years. What would he give, to turn back the clock and live it out differently? He hoped the dream might let him, but it wasn’t that kind of dream.

  So long, Frick.

  So long, baby.

  Guidry killed the next day—Tuesday, departure day—without too much trouble. He slept late. He went next door to the bowling alley for a hamburger and a couple of beers. Whunk. Crash! He read the morning paper. The hue and cry about the assassination continued: Find the truth! Carlos, in New Orleans, raged. At the Warren Commission, at Guidry.

  At six o’clock the cab dropped Guidry at Nellis. He handed the corporal at the gate his pass. The pass looked official. Maybe it was. The corporal picked up his phone. He said a few words that Guidry couldn’t make out. He put down the phone and wrote something in his log. He wrote and he wrote. If a couple of MPs were lying in wait to arrest Guidry, now was the time for them to pop out of the cake.

  The corporal finished writing and handed the pass back to Guidry. “You know where you’re going, sir?” he said.

  “I’m thumbing a ride with Colonel Tolliver tonight,” Guidry said. “Know where I can find him?”

  “Try the BOQ. Bachelor Officer Quarters, straight ahead, last building on the left.”

  “Thanks.”

  Guidry slipped the pass back into his pocket. Once he walked through that gate, once he climbed aboard the plane and it lifted off the tarmac, he’d be a free man.

  Would Carlos go after Charlotte and the girls? Would he find them and kill them? Would he do worse than that? Would he make them pay for Guidry’s sins?

  Guidry didn’t know. He’d never have to know. In Vietnam, thousands of miles away, he would be a free man again. He could choose to believe whatever he wanted to believe.

  The corporal had better things to do than watch Guidry stand there. “Is there a problem, sir?” he said.

  Guidry thought about the question. He shook his head. “No.”

  33

  They approached from the west, dropping out of the bright blue empty and into the clouds. Just a few frivolous puffs at first and then more serious stuff, layer on top of layer, so dense and soggy that the plane seemed to labor, a dull knife trying to saw through waxed gray canvas.

  Vietnam was supposed to be even hotter and more humid than New Orleans. That’s what Guidry had heard somewhere. He relished the return to hot and humid. The desert, with air too thin and too dry to sustain meaningful life, had almost killed him. He was glad to be back in his natural habitat.

  Falling, falling, the landing gear clanking into place. Out of the clouds, a lush tropical patchwork below, the streams and swamps and canals a silvery stitchwork in the flat afternoon light.

  Guidry considered stopping off for a quick bite first. But the muffuletta from Central Grocery or the muffuletta from Frank’s? The gumbo from Bozo’s in Mid-City or the gumbo from Uglesich’s? Or the gumbo from … Ye gods, whose gumbo? Guidry would never be able to choose, the decision would cripple him. He picked up his car and drove straight to The Famous Door on Bourbon.

  It was too early for any Dixieland, but a few years ago the club’s owner had squeezed in a kitchen and turned the back room into an invitation-only social club. The Spot, he called it. Reprobates and street rats only, thank you very much. On Wednesdays, when the owner’s wife made her legendary braciole with tomato gravy, the joint jumped. Carlos, a champion eater in a town of champion eaters, wouldn’t have missed his Wednesday braciole if the whole Quarter had been on fire.

  He was sitting at his usual table, Seraphine on his right and Frenchy Brouillette on his left, Frenchy yammering away and keeping Carlos entertained while he ate. No bodyguard. Carlos almost never used one, not around town. What was the point? Take a crack at Carlos in New Orleans and you’d hit the ground before he did.

  Frenchy spotted Guidry first. Frenchy almost fell off his chair. Seraphine, who’d just taken a drag from her cigarette, held the smoke for a moment and then exhaled through her nostrils. That was her almost falling off her chair. She wore a demure little sweater dress, seafoam green, with a gathered waist and pleated skirt. A white cardigan draped over her shoulders, hair with spit-curled bangs and a ponytail in back, a headband that matched the dress. She looked like she was ready to integrate an Alabama high school in 1954.

  Carlos glanced up but kept eating. “Frenchy,” he said.

  “What?” Frenchy said. “Oh.”

  Frenchy scrammed. Guidry sat down across from Carlos.

  “You want a plate?” Carlos said.

  “No thanks.” Guidry liked the braciole at The Spot just fine, but he’d never grasped the general hysteria. Maybe it tasted better if you were Italian. “I’ll take the rest of Frenchy’s wine, if you don’t think he’ll mind.”

  “Take it,” Carlos said.

  Seraphine looked at Guidry without looking at him, tenser than he’d ever seen her before. She was wondering what he’d say about her, to try to save his own skin.

  Barone claimed that she’d tipped him. Guidry had thought it over during the flight from Vegas. He’d recalled the last conversation he had with Seraphine. From the phone box at the filling station on La Porte, back in Houston, right after he dumped the Eldorado in the ship channel.

  You’ll spend the night at the Rice?

  The slip that got him thinking. Why is she asking that? She knows I’m spending the night at the Rice.

  Except it hadn’t been a slip. Seraphine never slipped. She knew the fertile soil of Guidry’s suspicious mind. She’d planted the seed of doubt with purpose. She’d saved his life. Maybe she’d saved his life in Vegas, too, and he hadn’t even realized it.

  Carlos stabbed and shoveled and chewed. The heavy linen napkin tucked into his collar wasn’t just for show. “You suppose to be dead, Frank,” he said.

  “Don’t I know it,” Guidry said.

  “You like one of them cats,” Carlos said. “With the five lives.”

  “Nine.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  By now everyone in the room was trying not to gawk. Even the owner’s wife, chopping garlic in the kitchen, was peeping out through the pickup window. Guidry liked to think that people would be telling this story, however it ended, for years to come.

  He walked right in.

  No he didn’t.

  Sat right down across from Carlos.

  No. And you saw it all?

  I was right there.

  Carlos mopped up the last of the tomato gravy with a crust of French bread. Seraphine still hadn’t said a word. She lit a fresh cigarette, the flame of the match not quite as steady as it might have been.

  “So what you want, Frank?” Carlos said. “Why you here?”

  Guidry reached for the bottle of red and topped up his glass. “I want to make a deal.”

  “All right.”

  “You back off me and I’ll back off you,” Guidry said. “Tit for tat, quid pro quo.”

  Carlos smiled. He only smiled when he was feeling murderous. “You gonna back off me?” he said. “You a real comedian, Frank. I forgot that about you.”

  “Back off me or I’ll go to the feds,” Guidry said. “I’ll tell them what I know, and I’ll tell them everything Barone told me before he croaked. Oh, baby, Barone told tales that curled my hair. I’ll tell the feds and the newspapers and Earl Warren, too, if he’ll lend me an ear. I bet he will. And just so we’re good and goddamn clear, Uncle, I never would have ratted you out, not if you hadn’t tried to cut my string first.”

  It was a good thing Carlos had already finished his dinner, or he might have choked on it. Guidry watched as the bags under his eyes grew darker and darker. Good. Guidry wanted him mad as hell. He wanted Carlos so mad that he
forgot about everyone in the world but Guidry.

  Seraphine was staring openly at Guidry now. Disbelief. He turned to face her.

  “Was it your idea, darlin’?” he asked her. “To toss dear old Frank Guidry in the trash? Well, the hell with you, too. Because once I spread the gospel, you won’t spend the rest of your life in Leavenworth or Guatemala like Uncle here. You’ll swing low, swing high, sweet Seraphine.”

  Can you believe it?

  You were there? Really there?

  Right there, baby. Couldn’t hear what they was saying, but you could feel it. Know what I mean? The whole joint, everyone’s nerves about to fry.

  “Do we have a deal?” Guidry asked Carlos.

  Carlos yanked the napkin out of his collar. He looked down at the napkin to see if maybe he could use it to strangle Guidry, right then and there.

  “Do we have a deal or don’t we?” Guidry said.

  “Yeah.” Carlos smiled. He stood and tossed the napkin onto the table and walked out. Someone else might have missed the glance he gave Seraphine, might have missed the subtle acknowledgment that she returned, a subtle dip of the head. But Guidry was waiting for it.

  Once Carlos was gone, Seraphine took out her compact and applied a fresh coat of lipstick. “Thank you,” she said.

  “I owed you one,” he said. “Yes? Maybe more than one.”

  “I didn’t agree with the decision.”

  “But you didn’t fight for me either. Don’t worry. I wouldn’t fight for me either.”

  “What are you doing, Frank?” she said, her voice almost too quiet to hear. And lo, could it be? A damp shine along the soft pink under-edge of her eyelid, an actual tear beginning to well? Probably not, but a man could dream.

  “You know what I’m doing,” he said.

  “Why are you doing it?” she said.

  “It’s just a matter of time. I’m a realist. Carlos will get me. You’ll get me. This way I make it quick and easy for you and you’ll make it quick and easy for me.”

  She didn’t believe it. But neither could she fathom any other reason to explain what he was doing. For the first time in their long partnership, friendship, relationship, she couldn’t fathom him. He’d surprised her with unexpected depths, secrets of the hidden world.