The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Hector shot her a look and dipped his head a fraction in Shannon’s direction. “Watch your mouth, lady,” he said.

  Katy said, “You know everything, now, I can tell. She’s won you over to her side confiding it.”

  “I know it all, sure,” Hector said, choosing his words carefully. He could only hope Katy would do the same for Shannon’s sake, it behooved her too, after all. “But I don’t know it because anyone told it to me,” Hector added. “It didn’t take much observation or logic to put it together on my own, and a while back at that. Genes aren’t easy to hide. Heredity is a witch.”

  Katy scoffed. Shaking her head and opening her cigarette case, she said, “I don’t believe that at all. Not even a little.”

  “And I don’t much care either way what you believe,” Hector said. “But it’s true enough. Blonde hair and such rare violet eyes don’t lie. And even then, I’ve got a terrible knack for divining the way things are. It’s an occupational hazard. I read between the lines all too well. I drew my own conclusions miles back.”

  He held up his Zippo and opened it with a one-handed flick.

  She leaned in, holding his hand to steady it. Her hand was still cold from the walk over from the brownstone. Or maybe it’s always cold, he thought.

  “Like I said, it was obvious enough,” Hector said. “Meg never even confirmed it for me if that comforts you. Megan didn’t have to do that. Jimmy tumbled to it, too. We’re going to talk more about that topic, you and I, and I promise you that. Because I mean to know more about all of it and Meg isn’t sharing anything with me. And isn’t that ironic, given your wrong suspicions about Meg running her mouth? But you and I will have that conversation later, when it’s just us, alone.” Hector looked again at Shannon.

  The diner door opened, letting in a chilly breeze. It was Meg. She’s taken some trouble with herself: her hair and makeup looked fresh. She must have hung her clingy dress in the bathroom while she showered because all the wrinkles had fallen out of it as if it had been steamed.

  Meg sat down next to Hector. She smelled nice and enticing. Meg looked back and forth between Katy and Hector. Biting her lip, Meg scooped up a menu and said, “And so what’s good?”

  Shannon looked up from her drawing and smiled with a little dark milk moustache. “Scrambled eggs and chocolate milk!”

  Meg laughed and said, “Then I’ll have that.” That assertion drew a death stare from Katy.

  Thank Christ that Jimmy found them then. Hector slid around in the booth a bit closer to Shannon and Meg followed to make room for the rangy cop.

  Pushing his fedora back on his head, Jimmy said, “Somehow colder today than yesterday, I think.” He reached into the booth behind them and grabbed an unused, overturned coffee cup.

  Hector passed Jimmy the coffee urn and said, “What? No top of the mornin ’? What kind of Irishman are you?”

  “Not the stock or vaudeville kind,” Jimmy said dryly. “Let’s talk shop, Hector. There’s a forty-eight Packard sedan parked across from our hideout, Hector. Two men are inside. They look like more Feds to me.”

  Hector had missed them; leave it to Jimmy the cop not to have repeated that mistake.

  “Not a menace yet, I think, but I wouldn’t like to lead them to Eliot, or to others who might get dragged into this along with us,” Jimmy said.

  Katy said, “You said you could trust your partner, Mr. Hanrahan. But how else could those two men out there have found us so soon unless they were tipped by this trusted partner of yours?”

  Hector sipped coffee, watching over the rim of his cup as Jimmy began to seethe.

  Fact was, Kate was maybe on to something, Hector thought.

  But for Jimmy’s sake, Hector said, “Doesn’t have to mean more than the Feds do this stuff for a living, Kate. They likely figured Jimmy would contact his partner, the one man Jimmy can trust in this town without reservation. So maybe they tapped Josh Gordon’s phone. It’s what I think happened.”

  Jimmy said, “Me too. And these aren’t the same ones from last night. These lads look much more the pro.”

  Sadder news for us if true, Hector thought.

  “Let’s leave them there, then,” Hector said. “At least for a time. Maybe we’ve been sent help of some kind. Maybe old J. Edgar Hoover knows about our plight, after all. That frog-faced bastard owes me a favor, or two. Maybe these Hoover minions at least have instructions to have our backs.”

  “Maybe,” Jimmy said. “But my instinct is against that possibility. Just when did you become such an optimist, Hector?”

  “Maybe it’s just the holiday season,” Hector said. “The cold wind of hope blows eternal.”

  “The rum in the eggnog, more likely,” Jimmy said.

  Breakfast remained a tense affair: pointless small talk and rehashing of strategies that were less than half-evolved. Some gallows humor that could be pitched safely over Shannon’s head.

  The waitress brought the bill. Jimmy reached for it, but Hector snagged it and said, “My party.”

  Jimmy and Meg thanked him, which prompted a mumbled thank you from Shannon, who was bent over her napkin, intensely scribbling away.

  After a time, Jimmy slid out of the booth and offered a hand to Katy. She took it and he pulled her from the booth.

  Shannon said, “All done!”

  The little girl handed Hector the napkin. He held it up and Shannon said, “It’s for you.”

  In the drawing, three stick figures were basking under a smiling sun.

  Two had triangles between their waists and feet. Those three-sided shapes represented skirts, Hector guessed.

  One of those stick figures was shorter than the other.

  The third stick figure was definitely a male. There was a gun in that stick figure’s hand. The little male stick figure held the hands of the other two.

  Above the three figures were three names scrawled in toddler, Pidgin English, and all of the ‘e’s were rendered backwards: “Meg, Me, Hector.”

  Jimmy was drawn in there as a beaming, broken-nosed sun.

  There was no Kate in sight.

  Hector thanked Shannon and deftly folded up the napkin and slid it into the breast pocket of his sports jacket, slipping it behind his display handkerchief.

  Katy hadn’t seen the picture, thank God.

  But Meg surely had.

  The look on Meg’s face broke Hector’s heart.

  10

  They were scheduled to meet Ness at noon. The stores downtown opened at ten.

  Katy selected Sterling Lindner Davis to replenish hers and Shannon’s wardrobes. Hector leaned hard on Katy. “You buy off-the-rack stuff, only,” he said. “No futzing around trying things on. We don’t have the luxury of time.” To insure Kate’s compliance, Hector insisted Shannon stay with him.

  As they ducked into the warmth of the store, Jimmy leaned into Hector’s ear and said, “I’ll see to the missus; you see to—”

  If he said “the mistress” again Hector thought he might swing on Jim, best of friends or not. But Jimmy said: “—Megan and the little one, of course.”

  They did that, a grimacing Jimmy and an annoyed Katy briskly wandering off to shop for clothes.

  Shannon held Hector and Meg’s hands, staring up at the giant Christmas tree looming above them, reaching up several floors toward the ceiling. Meg smiled at Hector and said to Shannon, “Want to see Santa, honey?” As if she had to ask. Hector watched Meg and Shannon together—clearly in the moment, looking to the world like mother and child.

  Katy? She didn’t exude much maternal instinct, so far as Hector had seen.

  They loitered in a short line to see a paunchy old Clevelander who’d taken the trouble to grow his own yellow-white whiskers out, thick and full. Hector thought the ringer a pretty good Kris Kringle, as those big-gutted suckers ran.

  At some point, Shannon was taken from them by a dishy, busty young thing in a scarlet and crushed-velvet elf suit to stand in line with other children between crimso
n velvet ropes. Meg pressed against Hector, still watching Shannon. She said, “I should maybe split off from you all, and quite soon. It’s getting tenser between Katy and I. When it was just the two of us, and Katy thought she needed me, it was a little easier. Now it’s just very bad. Me leaving would probably be the best thing. And the three of us wandering around up here together with the holidays and all these pretty lights and the season? It feels like…” A long beat. “It feels like the best of home in some ways. It feels like family and that frankly hurts more than I’d have imagined.”

  Hector felt a bit of the same way, and more so now as he let himself actually think about it. Hector didn’t like the sound of his own voice as he said the next: “You running would be the best thing for who, Meg? For you? For the rest of us? Just how do you figure your bolting helps anything?”

  “I’d do it for my daughter’s sake,” Meg said. “You saw that picture she drew of us.”

  Hector shook his head, emphatic. “You running off doesn’t help Shannon in any way I can fathom. Hell, Katy’s mothering instincts aren’t. She thinks providing clothes—providing mere things—are the same as giving her love.” Hector kissed Meg’s forehead. “You stay close to us,” he said. “Closer than ever. You don’t rabbit on that child. Or on me. Don’t you do that.”

  She pressed a hand to his heart. “You said it yourself, Hector. If you and that Irish flatfoot by some miracle actually pull us through this mess, then Katy is going to take Shannon and bolt on me somewhere not too far down the road. We all know that’s so.”

  Argue that? Hector didn’t try. He went for the change-up:

  “How did this come to be, Meg? How did Shannon come to believe Katy is actually her mother?”

  Meg was watching Shannon who was fidgeting in line. She said, “There isn’t time, Hector. I haven’t the stomach for it. And satisfying your curiosity will not change anything for me or her. It’s all just done.”

  Christ. He chewed his lip and then lit a cigarette. He gestured at Shannon with his cigarette hand. “What do you think she’ll ask Santa for?”

  “A puppy,” Meg said, smiling. Her eyes were moist. “It’s all she talks about. A little white puppy.”

  Hector nodded, exhaling cigarette smoke though both nostrils. “She’s told you that?”

  “She talks about it all the time. It’s just that I actually listen to Shannon.” Meg didn’t haven’t to say, Because Katy doesn’t.

  She said to him, “You have children of your own?”

  “Came very close once. Lost that child a long time ago.”

  “How old was he—she?” She wrinkled her brow. “And lost the baby, how? Divorce?”

  “Never quite really born,” Hector said, voice raw. Didn’t hurt less for that, not for Hector, but he held his tongue and didn’t volunteer that fact to Meg. She was keeping plenty of secrets, so Hector felt entitled to a few of his own.

  ***

  “Brand new clothes,” Katy said, holding up shopping bags. Jimmy was behind her, lugging new luggage. Hector hoped those suitcases, and whatever Shannon had wending its way via cutouts to their brownstone, would fit in his Chevy’s trunk.

  Shannon looked at the bags and said, “That’s nice. Hey, Santa said he’s going to bring me a puppy! I’m going to call her Hector.”

  “That’s a boy’s name,” Katy said. “And there’ll be no dogs in our new house.”

  Shannon said, “But Santa promised.”

  “That wasn’t Santa,” Katy said. “That was just some old drunk dressed up like him.”

  Shannon’s lip began to tremble. Hector could tell Meg was about to say something she’d regret later. He squeezed Meg’s arm and whispered urgently, “Please, don’t.”

  ***

  Katy’s other shortcomings aside, she was a fast shopper: they still had an hour before their scheduled meeting with Ness, so Jimmy suggested early lunch.

  The cop took them to an Italian joint about five minutes from Sterling Linder Davis. On the way there, they passed a theater. The marquee was touting its offering of the television broadcasts of the Kefauver hearings. The senate hearings were still the biggest show in television, and, according to morning papers, the hearings were spiking Christmas television set sales.

  ***

  The little girl was again wolfing down her food. A jovial, white-haired man in a chef’s hat stopped by their table to inquire about the quality of their food. His voice was heavily accented. The man in the chef’s hat had a white moustache and seemed vaguely familiar to Hector. The chef clapped Hanrahan on the back and said, “Everything is okay, James?”

  “Aces,” Jimmy said. “Better than perfect. Dee-lish.”

  Shannon, pointing at the chef said, “You look like the man on the spaghetti cans.” Shannon pronounced it sketty.

  Jimmy smiled and cupped Shannon’s chin in his big hand. “He is the man on the spaghetti cans, child. This is Mr. Boyardee—Hector Boyardee.”

  When the chef left, Jimmy said, “That Hector—or Chef Boyardee—opened the Il Giardino Italia an age ago. Made a name for himself around these parts. Now’s he’s a corporation with his Chef Boyardee line of foods. Owns a string of restaurants around northeastern Ohio. Has a production plant in Parma.”

  Shannon, evidently envisioning some pop culture pantheon of white-mustached burly men somewhere, said, “I wonder if Chef Boyardee knows Santa?”

  Jimmy said, “Very cute, that.” He bit his lip, suddenly gone all over grave. Jimmy said to Hector, “Be subtle here, Hec. There in the mirror. Regard those two boyos by the bar. Guinea hoodlums if I ever saw any.”

  Hector grunted and said, “Yeah, I see ’em. And, yeah, they have the look. But it is an Italian restaurant after all, Jimmy.” Hector gave them some more consideration, then said, “Yet they do seem to only have eyes for us.”

  Fearful sounding, Meg said, “How’d they find us? Maybe tipped by those Feds in front of our place?”

  “Maybe,” Hector said. “But if those Feds are as pro as Jimmy thinks, I don’t believe they’d be on any Mafioso’s dole. So it must have been something else.”

  Meg raised her eyebrows. “What then?”

  Hector turned to Katy. “You often shop at that store we just left?”

  Katy pulled out a cigarette. This time Hector didn’t reach for his Zippo. She rooted around in her purse for matches. “I go there all the time,” Katy said, not making eye contact. “It’s the only place I shop for clothes.” She didn’t quite sniff as she confessed that last, but Hector thought it was implied.

  “They know you there at the store then,” Hector said. “Know you all too well. Probably have all your measurements. Shannon’s, too.”

  “Of course,” Katy said, rather haughty now. Hector knew why her shopping spree had taken so little time.

  Jimmy, now in detective mode, said, “Don’t suppose you paid cash for all that back there, did you dear Kate? I kick myself for not more closely observing your transaction, I’ll confess.”

  “Of course not,” Kate said. “We’ll need what money I have on me when we set down roots.”

  Hector wanted to smash her on the spot.

  “Brilliant,” Jimmy said.

  The two hoodlums were rising. One’s jacket gapped as he stood; Hector saw the butt of a gun poking from under the man’s left armpit.

  Hector said, “Whether you need to go or not, Shannon, I want you to go to the bathroom and lock yourself in a stall. Wait until Meg or Katy comes to get you. Go right now. Go fast.”

  The little girl ran toward the restrooms as Meg pointed to them. Jimmy and Hector stood. Jimmy said, “Best meet ’em halfway, eh, Hector? Maybe throw ’em off step? Figure they’re headed here to escort us outside to do the wicked deed. Us rushing to greet them just may unnerve ’em.”

  “Sounds the grand plan,” Hector said, letting a little Irish accent into his voice. He watched one of the thugs. The man looked flustered to see Shannon running toward the lady’s room. Hector said, “One on
the left is mine, Jim.”

  They walked briskly toward the two thugs who were now moving more uncertainly toward Jimmy and Hector.

  As an afterthought, Jimmy said, “You do have your Colt on your person now?”

  “I do,” Hector said. “I just hope Chef Boyardee doesn’t have a hefty insurance deductible. This to come bears all the earmarks of serious mayhem.”

  11

  Hector wasn’t too keen on pulling a gun in a restaurant, particularly not in an Italian joint in northern Ohio where you couldn’t be sure whether or not significant numbers of other noshing patrons might be packing gats themselves. Cleveland was a Mafia beachhead. This joint was fairly busy, too, and a stray bullet seemed more apt to hit a civilian than to miss one.

  So Hector let his man get his hand in his jacket to reach for his piece, then Hector grabbed hold of that wrist with his left hand. With his right, Hector reached between his man’s legs, got a handful and squeezed tightly, twisting at the man’s genitals and getting him up on his toes. The thug gasped and turned red. His eyes filled with tears and he tried to talk but couldn’t find his wind.

  It was dirty pool, sure, like back-shooting or maybe even a little worse than that, Hector thought to himself.

  But it was also the quickest way to shut down a man’s nervous system short of shooting him just-so in the head. This nasty move of Hector’s brought full and instant compliance. And hell, this was survivable.

  Jimmy was still more direct: he shoved his .45 under his man’s chin and held up his badge for the dining room to see. He said, “Stay seated, folks. Eat up and enjoy and please excuse these two hoodlum fools’ shenanigans. Low-level police business, this is, that’s all. Nothing to write home about. Relax and enjoy the grub.”

  Servers stepped aside as Jimmy and Hector pushed the two men backward to a dimly lit corridor and on into the kitchen to the sound of excited murmurs.

  Jimmy’s man made a grab for a pot of boiling water. Jimmy saw it coming and kicked his attackers’ legs from under him. The man’s arm upset the pot of water as he fell. The scalding water splashed over the man’s head. Jimmy cursed and clubbed his man senseless. He grabbed him by the belt and half-lifted him, half-dragged him through a back door. He dropped the scalded man in a snow bank at the back of the restaurant.