by Jon Jacks
Sure, I say, wondering why he’d want to lave Marina behind.
‘I’m being watched,’ he says, as if he’s read my mind.
I glance towards Brad, wondering if it’s such a great idea meeting up with Lee again.
‘I knew about that kid, don’t worry. Fact is, I’m one of the guys set to keeping tabs on Lee here. See, it’s perfect; whenever we’re seen together, I just make out I’m laying down the way it is to him.’
‘So they know where you are. So they know where I am.’
Brad chuckles.
‘Good to see selfishness is setting in kid – that’s good for self-preservation, believe me. But I’ve been putting a few feelers out. Now I know for sure what I’d always suspected; they don’t see me as the one who’s spirited you away, see? As for you, who’s gonna think you’re dumb enough to hide out with someone already under observation? Best place to hide anything or anybody is out in the open, where they’re least expecting it to be.’
He looks back towards Lee, winks mischievously.
‘Lee here, he’s making sure his notoriety means no one would suspect him of ever doing anything serious. Tell him Lee, tell the kid how you’ve been stirring up a hornets nest to keep them well and truly occupied.’
‘Down in Mexico; I applied for a visa at the Cuban Embassy. Said I wanted to visit on my way back to Russia.’
‘Damn it all kid if he don’t head down there the way he came back – on a bus. And he’s telling everyone on that bus that he’s planning on heading to Cuba.’
‘Course, the Cubans say the Russian Embassy has to okay my trip to Russia before they’re handing out any visa. So I’m heading back and forth between these embassies. Getting into all kinda arguments with them for being so slow in getting my visa sorted.’
‘Turns out the Cubans say a guy like Lee here would be hindering their precious revolution rather than aiding it!’
Brad guffaws loudly, making the only other customer look round in surprise. The staff act like they’ve seen it all before, and don’t care whether they see it again or not.
‘So Lee didn’t get what he wanted? To visit Cuba?’
Brad laughs out loud again.
I can’t understand what the big joke is. Lee also looks pokerfaced, serious even.
‘It’s misdirection kid.’ Brad slaps my shoulder. ‘Like a magician, when he makes sure you’re watching him – but what the hell if he ain’t making you watch the wrong hand!’
I shrug, more confused than ever.
‘So…so if that ain’t what you really want to do…What is it you’re really after doing?’
Brad looks at me, grins.
‘Keeping you safe kid; what’d’ya think?’
*
‘We’re looking for a guy; hair like he ain’t washed it for fifteen years. Body a skeleton would be ashamed of.’
Lee’s headed back to Ruth’s, so me and Brad have called in at the bar I first saw Rake in.
Brad reckons we might get ourselves official protection, provided we can get Rake to testify in front of a judge he knows, ‘a judge so honest I’m surprised he’s still in the job.’
We’ve been keeping the bar under observation for a few days now, hoping to see Rake going in, hoping we can get to see any sign of the agent he mentioned.
We ain’t seen hair nor hide of either of them.
Brad’s none too easy about this agent Rake says has been helping him. Like Rake, Brad’s saying we can’t trust anyone.
Could be this agent’s on the level, like Brad taking it upon himself to protect a guy who’s got himself into trouble with a corrupt state. ‘Plenty of people out there are keeping their heads low since all this hit the fan; unsure who to trust, even if there’s anyone you can trust.’
Could be, though, the agent’s using Rake as bait. ‘Staking him out in the open, drawing out fools like us stupid enough to go looking for him.’
He’d finished by drawing a finger across his throat.
I’d gulped.
‘That’s what’ll happen to us if he turns us in?’
‘No, kid, that’s what’ll happen to him if he turns us in.’
I’d expected a grin, but there wasn’t even the beginnings of a smile.
His smile still ain’t there as he finishes asking the bartender if he’s seen Rake recently.
‘Seen lots of guys in here. Who’s asking?’
Brad flashes his ID.
‘Ahh,’ says the bartender, his heavy eyebrows arching.
He’s a big, bulky guy. He leans forward on the bar like he knows how to handle himself. Like his whole body is saying we don’t want any trouble in here, but if you insist chances are you’re gonna loose.
As if to stress this point, his shirtsleeves are rolled right back, gripping tightly around his biceps.
Just to stress his own point, Brad suddenly grabs the guy’s Dean Martin mop and smashes his face down hard on the bar top.
The guy’s face comes up dazed and bloodied. Dean Martin after a few rounds with Sonny Liston.
Brad does it again, just to be sure.
‘I ain’t got time to waste being polite.’
Brad doesn’t even bother sneering. He says it like he’s ordered a pack of Pall Mall.
‘He ain’t been here! He ain’t been in for ages now!’
The guy screams it out. His eyes are wandering, wondering how many of his customers are witnessing his humiliation.
‘Ages?’
Brad just says the one word, but I’ve never heard a simple word like that said with such menace.
‘How long is “ages”? Think carefully about this now.’
‘Less than a week. A few days!’
‘Is that usual? Or does he usually come in here?’
‘Most days he’s in here. Drunk. Drinks like he’s trying to forget, know what I mean? Easier than joining the French Foreign Legion. Loosing yourself in Milwaukee’s finest.’
The guy’s starting to get his confidence back. Brad puts him back in his place by smashing his face down hard on the bar once again.
The guy comes up more bloodied than ever, his nose probably broken. Teeth like blood splattered tombstones on a ghost train ride.
‘Where’s he live?’
I gasp out the question for some reason. I was with him just a few days back; Rake, the guy who tended bushes like they were babies.
And now he seems to have disappeared.
‘Never said, never said!’
The guy looks at me like’s he’s every bit as terrified of me as he is of Brad.
Brad’s still holding the guy hard by his hair, holding his head back. Blood’s running from the guy’s crushed nose down onto the bar.
‘He didn’t want anyone to know. Used to say he always took a different way home, never the same. Take him hours sometimes, he’d say.’
Brad pull’s the guy’s face round so they’re looking at each other. The guy grimaces in pain, the Dean Martin hair coming out by the roots here and there.
‘Why’d he do that?’
‘He’d been scared for his life! Thought you knew, thought that’s why you were here!’
The guy’s almost weeping. He’s spluttering, the blood swirling into his mouth.
‘You…you friends of his?’
‘You could say that, yeah.’
Brad jerks hard on the hair for extra effect.
The guy tries to hold back a scream. He talks quickly.
‘He’d been coming out with some crock ’bout the Kennedys being after him. It don’t go down well with some of the guys here, know what I mean? He was always getting into fights, like he enjoyed the pain, like he wanted knocking out!’
Brad looks around the bar. Eyeing the other customers like a snake figures out who it’s gonna force its venom into.
Everyone looks away. Makes out they’re busy chalking a pool cue, studying t
he label on a bottle, scratching a badly shaven chin.
Brad stares hard at a guy nervously twiddling the cap of his bottle of Bud.
‘You. The guy with the Bud. Where’d he live?’
He asks it without even bothering to change his grip on the bloodied bartender. The guy’s head’s still forced right back, like he’s studying cracks on the ceiling.
The guy with the Bud looks up, squeaks out his reply.
‘He never said. He’d threaten people, telling them they ain’t gotta follow him. When he was drunk. He was always drunk.’
At last, Brad lets the poor bartender go.
The guy’s head springs up like a scarlet painted jack-in-the-box. The Dean Martin’s ruined, the hair standing up, making him look like some cousin of Rake’s.
The guy grimaces, rubs his head. He quickly checks in the mirror that he’s still got some hair left.
Brad throws some loose change his way. Grunts something about the guy needing to smarten himself up, needs to get himself some pomade.
‘Looks like we’ve got ourselves a dead end again, kid,’ he says to me. ‘And I ain’t too sure how literal I’m being with the word “dead”.’
*
Chapter 43
Lee’s moved in with me.
Marina has stayed at Ruth’s.
Way I see it. Lee’s lying to everyone he meets at the moment. Specially when it comes to his name.
O.H. Lee, he says his name is.
Don’t ask me – he says he needs to. Says he’s under observation, and the agents following him are getting more nosey, more persistent, by the day.
Ruth’s helped him get a job, too. Filling in book orders at the Texas School Book Depository.
Not much of a job he says.
But heck, he needs the money.
*
Lee’s not smiling much.
Gets pissed when he sees me grinning at something on the TV.
The Dick Van Dyke Show. Wouldn’t you know it, Rob and Laura aren’t married after all. They’re planning on eloping.
‘What’s so great about the world that anyone deserves to smile?’ Lee asks.
Fact is, I’m grinning because I still figure we’ve got a chance of finding Rake. Still got a chance of persuading the guy it’s best for everyone if we can get him in front of this fine, upstanding judge Brad knows.
Turns out my optimism ain’t that misplaced after all.
Brad turns up, says turn that dammed thing off kid. Says we’ve had a breakthrough, but we’re gonna have to move damned quick.
He’s got Rake’s address. Sweet Jesus, he’s got Rake’s address.
‘Don’t go getting so dammed excited kid!’
Wow, he says it real hard, real surly, like he’s gonna hit me if I keep on dancing around like my feet have caught fire.
‘You ain’t asked how come I know.’
I stop dancing.
‘He’s…he’s not dead, is he?’
‘Not that I know of kid. But a friend of mine, the agent who was protecting him, he’s down the morgue with more holes than a pauper’s sieve.’
*
That’s how Brad had found out Rake’s address.
He’d heard of his friend’s death. Heard how he and a few cops had died in a shootout with no one quite sure who was firing at who.
‘Yet what d’ya know, the paper’s don’t see fit to print even a few words on the kinda street massacre we ain’t seen since we took down Bonnie and Clyde.’
So Brad knows someone powerful is holding the news hounds back.
‘Ergo,’ he says, ‘I start wondering if my friend ain’t been a victim of his own good nature. Maybe protecting some idiot on the run from the Kennedys. So where’s my friend got a safe house round here, I start thinking?’
The safe house, it seems, is deserted. Brad’s been round there, checked it out, kept it under observation for a while.
Nothing.
No one going in. No one coming out. No lights coming on during the night.
But Brad’s checked at the utility departments. Someone’s using water in there, and electricity.
Brad sends me round to knock on the door.
To call out to Rake that it’s only me, there’s no danger. Brad ain’t gonna be anywhere near, worried we’d just end up spooking Rake.
‘He ain’t gonna be too happy seeing anyone who looks like an agent till you calm him down a bit kid. Let him know I’m on the level, then we’ll meet.’
There’s no answer to my knocking. No reply to my calling.
‘Rake, it’s me, Jack! There ain’t no one with me. I know you’re in there. You stay here, you’re in danger Rake. Think about it; I found out you’re living here, yeah?’
Beyond the door, I hear scuffling.
The door eases open, jerks to a halt on a chain stopping it opening more than a few inches.
As if a chain like that could stop anyone wanting to kill him!
The eyes are wide, terrified. Constantly moving. The eyes of a cornered, doomed animal.
‘Jack? You might’ve been followed!’
‘I wasn’t followed Rake – I checked. I’m in danger too remember.’
‘They might’ve followed you here! Get us both together!’
‘Rake, this ain’t a safe house no more. You’re gonna have to get outa here! Better still, come with me.’
I say it as calmly as I can, trying not to spook him.
‘Come with you? They’re after you too Jack! How’d you find me?’
‘Your agent, Rake. Other agents know where he had his safe houses.’
His eyes blink. Seems like it’s the first time I’ve seen ’em blink since he’s been at the door.
‘I saw him die Jack. Gunned down. He told me to run for it. But when I turned to see if he was following, I saw him fall.’
He says it like he’s hypnotised.
‘We can go to a judge Rake; get ourselves official protection.’
His laugh tells me he’s already lost it. It’s the laugh of a madman; James Cagney, as he’s about to blow himself to kingdom come.
‘A judge Jack? No judge can protect us!’
‘If this judge can’t protect us, Rake, no one can.’
His eyes turn like balls bobbing on waterspouts at a shooting range. He undoes the chain. Opens the door just enough so I can walk in as he quickly moves aside.
He shuts the door after me, bolting it top and bottom.
There’s food everywhere, stacked in piles waiting to be eaten. Cans already opened and thrown into a corner around an overfilled trashcan.
Flies and cockroaches are having the party of a lifetime.
I tell him how our only chance is to spill everything we know to this judge. A judge with the power to give us sanctuary or whatever it’s called.
He listens like he’s a parrot on a perch, the eyes never leaving you but jerking around in their sockets like they have a life of their own.
He nods, grabs his coat.
Follows me out the door.
For the first time in ages, I’m beginning to think we might have a chance of proving Marilyn was murdered. Proving the Kennedys were involved.
And, more importantly, making sure we aren’t gonna get killed trying to prove it.
*
Chapter 44
There’s a phone booth on the corner of the street.
Brad’s given me a couple of coins, told me to ring him from there soon as I’ve managed to persuade Rake he’s gonna have to testify in front of the judge.
Told me to ring him even if Rake’s decided he ain’t gonna testify in front of anybody.
The phone booth’s out in the open. Brad’s told me I can lo
ok for a phone I feel safer using if I want.
Using it might spook Rake, having to stand around where any watching sniper could take him out easier than shooting chickens in the back of a truck. ‘If you do use it, tell him to head across the road, get in the shadows of the buildings.’
As I dial the number and slip in a coin, Rake sets off across the road.
He’s lolloping along like an excited kid heading for the fair.
I’m watching him through the phone booth’s glass. It’s so cracked and stained with grime, it makes Rake look like he’s some jangling puppet, all angles and distortions.
The coin slips out, like it’s too thin or the wrong size or something.
I bend down, catch it before it rolls out and falls to the floor.
As I straighten up and slip in the other coin, the sedan hits Rake full on.
A loud smack, like a bag of mud, wood and bricks striking the sidewalk after dropping from the Empire State Building.
His body don’t look like a body anymore, bending like it’s nothing but straw and string.
The hair like a shock of flame on top of a shattering match.
The new coin slips unhindered through the machine and rolls to the floor.
*
Chapter 45
I’d run away.
Looked around, watched the sedan squeal around a corner, looked around again to see if anybody else had seen it all.
Then run away.
*
‘Not much else you could do kid. It wasn’t safe to stay around there.’
Even Brad looks shocked when I tell him what had happened.
‘We were fools kid. They must’ve been watching. Knew like we knew it would spook him if they went calling. Didn’t want to risk a noisy showdown in an apartment block with walls the Japs would call paper-thin.
‘But what about me? How come they didn’t get me too?’
He shrugs.
‘Who knows kid? You weren’t in the road like Rake was. Not even a sedan’s gonna come out too good after an argument with a phone booth.’
He pauses, his head slightly bowed, his brow furrowing like he’s thinking. Like he’s a panellist on a game show, finally given the question that’s really got him thinking.
‘Guys around you ain’t lasting too long kid. Thing is, I’m beginning to wonder how much longer I’ve got too.’
He looks up, the panellist who’s just had a spark of inspiration.
‘Thing is, I’m beginning to wonder quite a lot. Like, maybe I got it wrong kid when I thought Rake was the bait. Perhaps, kid, someone’s been using you as the bait all along. And we’ve both just been too goddamned dumb to realise it.’
