The Running Kind: A Hector Lassiter novel

by Craig McDonald

  Jimmy said, “Yes, Eliot, I know it well enough. Five it is then.”

  Jimmy nodded at Hector as he rose. The writer sensed the cop wanted out of the bookstore and away from the stench of Eliot’s cheap gin, fast.

  Hector scooped up the copies of his novels that Meg had selected for herself. He tossed Jimmy his car keys. “You all go ahead and warm up the car,” I said. “I’ll see to paying for these.”

  Meg sighed. “Pay for your own books? That won’t do. I’ll get them.”

  “No way, and anyway, I’ll receive royalties on these on the backside,” Hector said. “That’s the beauty of me buying them, it’s a kind of a wash.” That was a lie—no author ever made a cent of money from books sold on the secondary market, not on those copies sold by rare bookstores and the like. But Hector figured Meg wouldn’t grasp any of that. The writing life was an arcane and closed little world far outside Meg’s reality. Lucky her, Hector thought.

  Eliot and Hector were alone at the cash register. Eliot was opening each book and keying in the price. He said, “Have to say, it’s good to be back in the game, even it it’s only for a day.”

  “Some of us are shaped for one job,” Hector said. “Seems to me your talent and forte is to enforce the law, El.”

  “Too long away from it,” Eliot said. “I’m too old to go back to the treasury department. And Hoover would never have me in the Bureau. He blocked me back in the day when I tried. And I would never work well under that bastard even if he’d have me. Do you have any sense of the grief that prissy little monster gave Melvin Purvis?”

  “I’ve heard the stories,” Hector said. There were some children’s books stacked by the register. Hector found one about dogs that looked about Shannon’s speed and added it to his stack.

  “What brought you to Cleveland in the first place, Hector? Just visiting Jimmy?”

  “Actually, I was in Youngstown,” Hector said. “That’s where I hooked up with Jimmy and met these women. Jimmy was there, still chasing the Butcher. He said there was a similar torso killing committed this past July in Cleveland. He was chasing clues about that in Youngstown.”

  Ness said, “I’ve been following that murder a bit. I don’t think it’s the Butcher. Jimmy and I had a good suspect back in the day. Now he’s in a mad house down in Dayton. Checked himself in a while back to escape the possibility of prosecution. Near as I can tell, he’s still there. He sends me crazy, taunting letters sometimes. Postcards that read like the ramblings of the bloodthirsty mad man I know he is.”

  Somehow, that admission made the hair stand up on the back of Hector’s neck. “No kidding?”

  “No kidding. I won’t let my wife or child fetch the mail anymore because of the possibility of another sneering letter or postcard coming. They’re well-beyond sinister, Hector.”

  “So what do you make of this latest killing of this Robertson fella who Jimmy’s been on about?”

  “An homage to the Butcher, maybe,” Eliot said, placing the books in a brown paper bag. “A retrospective on the Kingsbury case ran in one of the slick magazines not too long before the body was found. May have excited some other psychopath. Or maybe it’s just… something else. The victim was a low-level criminal. Who knows what kinds of enemies he may have made for himself? The mob has elevated dismemberment to a kind of trademark in these parts.”

  Eliot’s movements seemed fairly loose now, like he was pretty strongly affected by the booze. Something about the way the spirits took Eliot reminded Hector of watching similar transformations come over Scott Fitzgerald during café crawls along the Left Bank decades before.

  “Why are you doing this, Hector? Jimmy’s a cop and so he has little choice. I mean, being the born cop he is. But you’re a civilian now.” Eliot smiled. “I mean, more or less.”

  Hector shrugged. “No particular reason other than they need help. And I’m solo lobo this year and so hard to touch in that sense. Hard to really hurt.”

  Eliot smiled, eyes unfocused. “It’s like the old saying goes, ‘The man who doesn’t want anything is invincible.’ It’s like me, when I took down Capone.”

  Accountants did that, not Eliot and not his squad of “Untouchables.” At best, Eliot and his crew were harriers to Capone. In military terminology, Eliot and the Untouchables were dispatched to Chicago to provide “harassing fire” against Capone, a headline-generating distraction while the tax accountants did their arcane but truly devastating work against Big Al.

  Eliot’s real glory had come in his first years in Cleveland. Nobody could take those triumphs from him.

  Except maybe for the Kingsbury Butcher. Eliot’s failure to catch the Phantom Headhunter—his inability to publicly close the pattern killer case—had eclipsed his successes in cleaning up the corrupt Cleveland police department, in subduing the feral youth gangs that plagued the city and in neutralizing the Cleveland mob’s circa-1930s expansion.

  “Maybe we can deal another body blow to Costa Nostra again,” Eliot said. “What do you think, Hector?”

  “That’d be swell,” Hector said, passing Eliot some bills. Too many bills. Hector meant to be gone before Eliot maybe caught the error. He shook Eliot’s hand. “Until the next time, buddy.”

  Hector turned his overcoat’s collar up and stepped out of the bookstore into a snow squall. The driver’s seat of his Chevy was empty, so Hector slid in. He passed the parcel of books back to Meg.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jimmy said.

  Hector got his car in gear and muttered, “Sure. Let’s do that, Jimmy.”

  They rolled a couple of blocks and Hector said, “Notions on a destination?”

  “Doesn’t really matter, the brownstone, I suppose,” Jimmy said, surly. “Time to pack up again and be ready to roll to the next hiding place.”

  Katy said, “What about those men parked out front?”

  Jimmy shook out a Lucky Strike and struck a match on a thumbnail. “For all we know, when Eliot pulls the strings, those boyos will maybe be your new escorts.”

  13

  Hector sat at the kitchen table, typing up the early morning’s output.

  Katy wandered out from one of the bedrooms. She held up her hands and said, “Sorry, I would hate to interrupt a working man.”

  “You’re not doing that,” Hector said, tugging the sheet of paper from the typewriter. “I’ve caught up to myself.”

  Katy smiled. “Must be a kick, hmm? Remaking the world the way you want it to be. People forever saying just what you want them to say. Making them do what you want them to do.”

  “You might be surprised,” Hector said. “You might even be wrong. And forever? That’s just pretend. What’s on your mind, Kate?”

  “I wanted to thank you for all you’ve tried to do for us,” she said, pulling up a chair. “You despise me, I can tell. Positions reversed, I’m sure I’d hate me, too. But you keep fighting for us, and I don’t think Meg’s the whole reason. Not Shannon, either.”

  Hector stacked up the sheets of his manuscript. He slid them into a leather valise he’d converted from an old saddlebag he’d retained from his days with the Pershing Expedition, back when he was mounted cavalry and chasing the rogue Mexican revolutionary general Francisco “Pancho” Villa.

  Hector sat back in his chair and picked up his pack of Pall Malls. He knocked one loose and held it out to Katy. She took the cigarette and he shook loose another one for himself. He held up his Zippo and she leaned in. She looked at the engraving on the lighter. “Who is E.H.?”

  “Another writer I knew.”

  “Knew?”

  “Know. Knew. It’s the same thing, in some ways. People are never really gone from your life or at least your mind. Least of all if you’re a writer, to boot.” They both exhaled some smoke. Hector said, “You truly want to show your gratitude? Tell me what you know about what I want to know.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at the bedroom where Shannon and Meg were. The door to the room was closed�
�Katy had shut it. She said, “My husband always had other women, pretty much from the time of our honeymoon. Whores and hangers-on. Round-heels trash who cadged drinks in the clubs he owns. Then there was Megan. She sang in one of Vito’s clubs. She sang standards and torch songs. Most of his women came and went. Megan somehow endured. And she seemed maybe just a cut above the rest. Kind of a corn-fed Veronica Lake.” Katy stared at the end of her cigarette. “That sounded uncharitable. I mean, she is a cut above the rest. A little anyway, you know? At least that’s true now.” More damning with faint praise: there seemed to be a lot of that going around these sorry days.

  Hector blew smoke, said, “How do you know, or how did you come to know, about Meg and her lingering thing with your husband?”

  “I hired a private investigator. He was a sleazy, terrible drunk of a man who liked to act like he was doing me great favors taking my money and performing the tasks I was paying him to execute. But he proved effective enough.” Katy blew some smoke his way. “He wasn’t like the private investigators in the mystery novels and movies. Not like Marlowe or Sam Spade.”

  Hector almost snorted. “Hammett is a lushed-up commie and goddamn Ray Chandler is an anglophile romantic fool who’s unwittingly light in the loafers. Old Ray and his goddamn tarnished knights of an ilk that never walked this wicked earth? Sentimental bullshit. Ray married a woman old enough to be his mother. Anyway, P.I.s are all bottom-feeders and parasites. In the real world, private eyes make their money on domestic strife and snapping incriminating photos. They’re little better than ticks or leeches. Only way they can make money is on others’ suffering.” Hector’s cigarette was pretty much down to a smoldering stub. He got out another cigarette. “What about Shannon?”

  Katy tipped her head back, blowing smoke out both nostrils. “I was barren. I am barren. Megan? Not so much. She got pregnant by Vito. So he paid her to go ahead and have the child. He thought it was important that he have a son. I should say at this point that Megan was a serious heroin addict. Vito put her in a clinic for the duration of her pregnancy to try and keep her clean.”

  “She’s clean now, I see no signs of an addiction.” Like Hector really knew. He’d always disdained drugs, dodged them and their users. Liquor was lone Hector’s vice of choice. Well, that and nicotine.

  Katy said, “Now, yes, she’s clean. Then, not even close. Thank God Shannon wasn’t ruined by her birth mother’s addiction.”

  “Yes… thank God.” Hector wasn’t sure he believed Kate about Megan’s alleged addiction. Not sure at all.

  Katy helped herself to another of his cigarettes and he lit it for her. “When Shannon was born, Vito arranged to have her birth records reflect both of us as her natural parents. Then Vito promptly lost interest in our baby. He only wanted a son. When Shannon’s sex was known, he washed his hands of her.”

  Hector blew smoke out both nostrils. “And Megan?”

  “About the time Shannon turned two, Megan really got herself straightened out. She finally got clean.”

  “So how’d you two end up allied?”

  “Another private investigator,” Katy said. “I learned Meg broke it off with my husband when she kicked her habit. I now suppose, for Megan at least, it took narcotic influence to sleep with my husband. That may give her an edge over me, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hector just looked at her for a while. Then he asked, “What made you run, Katy?”

  “My husband is going insane. I told you the truth about that. It’s a congenital thing. God, I hope Shannon’s spared that legacy. But Vito is losing his mind, there’s no doubt about that. His memory is failing faster all the time. He’s become violent. Coarse language in front of our daughter, all the time, now. He raised his hand to Shannon, twice. So I ran to the one person in the world I knew would care about his threat to Shannon maybe almost as much as I do.”

  At least as much, Hector thought. “Thank you, Katy,” Hector said. “Thank you for sharing this.”

  She half-smiled, the essence of skepticism. “What does your knowing really change in the end, Hector? What difference does it truly make?”

  He stubbed out his cigarette. “Honestly? It makes no difference at all,” he said.

  “But you feel better for knowing?”

  “Wouldn’t put it that way either,” Hector said. “Let’s say my curiosity is at last satisfied.”

  “Your friend’s friend is a lush, you know. Mr. Ness, I mean.”

  “Sure,” Hector said. “Eliot has been an alcoholic for years.”

  “This Ness guy really used to be somebody?”

  “He did. Hell, he may be somebody again. Don’t write him off yet.” Hector sighed. “We’re all somebody, Kate.”

  That drew an unbecoming and harsh laugh from the woman. “Now who’s slinging sentimental bull?” After a time, Katy said, “What odds do you give all of us, Hector? Honestly—what odds do you give us for surviving this mess?”

  “At least fifty-fifty.”

  Katy narrowed her eyes. “That high? Really?”

  “Absolutely.” Hector had given, now it was time to take it away: “It’s the cold, even odds of a simple either-or, darlin’. We either come out on the other side of this thing, or we don’t.”

  ***

  Hector was sitting on the couch, browsing over one of his older novels that Meg had selected for herself.

  God, but the memories those pages of pulp paper stirred, the heat of that island and the scent and taste of that woman… the silvery sound of his grandfather Beau’s voice.

  Meg’s hand was suddenly on the back of his neck. She said, “Does it read as good as you remember it, Hec?”

  “You assume I finish each book satisfied with the work.”

  “Don’t you? And maybe if you’re away from it for a long enough time?” Meg arched an eyebrow. “Maybe then you can approach your own book as a reader?”

  Hector said, “Fella once said that no book is ever truly finished by its author, only abandoned.”

  It had been years since Hector looked at that particular one of his novels. “Reads better than my memory of it, actually,” he said. “Damn, I could nearly write then.”

  “You can write now, I’m loving your newest one,” Meg said. “But it’s stressful, as you clearly intended. Why don’t you take me to a second lunch, Hector? Someplace swanky and romantic. Well, as much as any place can be in this town during lunch rush.”

  Hector closed his novel. “We can certainly do that. Just thought you might want more time with Shannon.”

  Meg tipped her head, searching his face. “You say that based on the premise that this Eliot Ness might get us our protection today and Katy may bolt before nightfall and I’ll never see Shannon again? Is that how it is?”

  “I hadn’t thought that through quite as explicitly as you have, but yes, I suppose that is what I meant,” he said. He did so reluctantly.

  Hector reached out and took her hand and coaxed Meg over the back of the couch and onto his lap. He kissed her. Meg curled up in his arms and said, “Time spent with Shannon now, knowing there may be hardly any time left, is almost too hard. It makes any time with her at all nearly unbearable. Some crazy split, huh?”

  Hector had no good answer for that one so he squeezed Meg’s hand. “I’ll tell Jimmy you and I are stepping out for a bit.”

  Hector rose and dipped his head into the next room to alert Jimmy to their leaving.

  The Irishman just smiled and shook his head. “They just get younger, don’t they, Hector?”

  Ouch.

  Hector scowled. “She’s in her early twenties. They’re always in their early twenties.” He could hear the defensive tone in his voice.

  Jimmy said, “But we just keep getting older. So the sea just gets wider.” Jimmy sighed and said, “Hell—go, enjoy.”

  14

  Hector was fed to the teeth with Italian food so he drove to a little Chinese hole-in-the-wall joint a couple of miles from the brownstone. On the way, Hector k
ept an eye peeled for tails. Their federal friends were indeed back there; Hector decided to let them stay.

  As they pulled up in front of the restaurant, Meg said, “This place one of Jim’s recommendations?”

  “I actually remember it from old days,” he said. “You like Chinese?”

  “Love it.”

  Hector came around the back of his Chevy and opened Meg’s door and then wrapped an arm around her waist. She said, “You told Eliot you’re not married this year.”

  “That’s right. But that’s not how I remember saying it.”

  “Is some woman who is not your wife waiting on you somewhere? Some woman with an eye to being next year’s wife?”

  He smiled. “You mean like that ‘New Mexico honey’ you were theorizing about the other day?”

  “Right. Like her, yes.”

  Hector thought of Jimmy, about his friend’s acid remark about Hector’s increasingly younger flames. Damn Jimmy, anyways. Hector just shrugged at Meg.

  “Just checking,” Meg said, gripping his arm harder as they made their way carefully across the icy pavement. “I mean, I have nowhere to go anymore, so anywhere will do, I guess. Maybe I should think about New Mexico for my new next place. Sun would be hell with my complexion, but after this fall’s weather, I could maybe do with the desert heat and air.”

  “There’s plenty of room,” Hector said. “You could come there anytime you like.” To his own ears, his voice lacked a certain conviction.

  ***

  Meg shivered a little, wrapping her arms around herself and running her hands up and down her bare arms. Hector slipped off his sports jacket and draped it over her shoulders, then sat back down across from her. He scooted his chair around closer to hers and tugged his placemat around to where he now sat.

  A pot of hot tea arrived and he poured them both some of that while they browsed the menu. In the low light, something in Meg’s looks, something in her bone structure, reminded Hector just a bit of another woman he’d known, a darkly creative painter.