She drove round some more until she stopped next to a green saloon.
“Here we are.”
“Why?”
“The passenger window is ajar so they’re asking for us to steal it. And should be easier to get inside.”
“Done.”
Less than a minute later, Frank sat in the driver’s seat fiddling with wires below the dashboard. Ten seconds more, the engine roared into life.
“You follow me out of town and we’ll get rid of the old ride in the desert. Pass me one of the bags: just in case.”
Steady as a rock, the two cars spluttered away from Vegas and Mary Lou kept three vehicles behind the green car. She always had a clear line of sight on Frank but, at a glance, they didn't look like they were a convoy.
Four miles out the city, he pulled off the highway and headed inland for six or seven hundred feet. Then he stopped behind a sand dune.
“We can’t burn this one - even if we had the gasoline.”
“It’s a hell of a dramatic signature though.”
“Sure is, babe.”
Instead they searched through the car inch by inch making sure there was nothing personal left inside. Nothing to connect them to that lump of metal. Trunk, rear seat, glove compartment. They both went over the whole thing so nothing could be missed. Frank got behind the wheel and Mary Lou sat beside him. The engine had been running all the time. He was about to move off when she put a hand on his.
“Are we sure we should go to LA?”
“It’s still the easiest place to launder the take. I know one or two people there. Anywhere else will be the same as Vegas.”
“Won’t they be waiting for us again though?”
“The City of Angels is a sprawling, spread out place. Nothing like compact old Vegas. You could spend a hundred years in LA and never come across someone who lived on the other side of town as you.”
The edges of Mary Lou’s eyes were reddening up and a tear was welling in one corner.
“We’ll be okay. When we hit town, I’ll make some calls, do the business and then we’re out of there living the high life where Uncle Frankie and the lot of them can’t touch us.”
Mary Lou smiled nervously. He kissed her full on the lips.
“Trust me. It’ll work out just fine.”
He hit the gas pedal and the tires turned but no motion occurred. Frank sighed.
“Damn sand.”
He put the shift stick into second gear and tried again. This time they lurched forward until he regained control and the wheels found solid highway.
“Next stop: Tinseltown.”
Frank tuned in a rock ‘n’ roll station and they headed south west. Mary Lou stared out the window and thought about the ending to The Thomas Crown Affair.
30
WHAT FELT A short time later, they crossed the state line and watched as the highway forced itself through woods and forests: like the trees would take over the road and were chasing them down the tarmac.
“Before we reach LA, we need to get a game plan. We were lucky in Vegas.”
“Very lucky, hon’.”
“And we might kid ourselves but it’ll be worse on the coast. I know it’s a big bad city but we must operate carefully if we’re to survive laundering half a million dollars under the radar.”
“Well, the least we should do before we arrive is to find some clothes to put on our backs. We’ve been wearing this lot since before I can remember.”
“Sure thing, babe.”
“And a toothbrush.”
“Got it.”
They passed a handful of cabins at five miles below the speed limit. A store broke the monotony of their journey and Frank pulled into one of the four spaces provided at the side of the road.
They could have been forgiven for thinking it was another log cabin but its neon sign attached to the front flashed that it was a general store. When Frank and Mary Lou walked in, they saw almost any item they could think of available for sale.
In one aisle were two piles of red plaid shirts and jeans. They rifled through until they found the correct sizes and picked toiletries, along with some other essentials.
“We’re gonna look like quite a pair.”
“Yeah, not what I had in mind.”
“Let’s see if we can find something a little less...”
“... Hicksville?”
“Yep.”
A scout round the store revealed a variety of garden tools, digging implements and many cans of food, but no other clothes. Frank took a shovel.
“We'll get more things to wear somewhere else but at least we’ve got something different for now.”
“Sure, hon’. But we'll dress like we’re cousins.”
“That’s normal round here.”
They chuckled and proceeded to the front to pay using some of their clean casino cash. Once they’d returned to the car, they changed into their new belongings and Mary Lou took over the driving.
“What do you think we should do?”
“We need to get the Feds, the mob and Frankie off our backs.”
“Any ideas?”
“The G-Men are looking for the money but what they love is to arrest people. So we should give them some bodies to find.”
“Bodies?”
“Yes. We must get ourselves two bodies.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope. Two burnt bodies all crisped and singed. That’d be ideal.”
“Frank. Are you saying...”
“We don’t have to go murdering anyone, only if we have to.”
Frank’s expression was more serious than she could remember. He was right though: if the Feds thought they were dead they’d have to give up the chase.
“To the morgue?”
“I reckon - unless we want to become the honeymoon killers.”
“Not if we can help it.”
“I agree.”
Mary Lou set off and headed to the nearest town once she’d spotted a road sign: where there were people, there were deaths. And when folk died, they went to the morgue.
Fifteen miles down the highway, she stopped the car two hundred feet from the Kingston Range mortuary. The building stood on the edge of a forested area next to a surgery. The doctor must have been out on call because no lights were on - nor in the morgue. In small-town America, the doc was the mortician too so there was little chance of a flurry of concerned citizens arriving to open up for the day’s business.
They hopped round the back in their matching jeans and shirts. Frank jimmied the door open using the newly acquired shovel and they hurried inside.
“Should have bought a flashlight.”
“Yes, babe.”
Frank improvised by switching the light on and they scurried to a side room to hunt out some bodies. There was a row of small chrome doors on a shelf, as they’d expected. Each door, four feet square, housed a gurney big enough to fit a corpse. One by one, Frank and Mary Lou opened the doors to find what they needed. The first two were empty and the third held a woman, the fourth and fifth contained an old man and a younger guy.
“Frank?”
“Yes, babe?”
“If we take two of these bodies and burn them, even the Feds will work out what we’ve done and will carry on chasing us.”
Frank leaned back on a wall and thought for a spell.
“What if we steal more bodies than we need?”
“Make it look like there’s a body snatcher loose?”
“Why not?”
“Won’t that bring a ton of G-Men down in the area?”
Frank considered the idea some more.
“How about taking the bodies from here and razing it to the ground?”
“We burn this place down to hide that two bodies will be burnt somewhere else. Hon’, this will not work.”
More silent thinking from Frank as he mulled over various scenarios.
“We need to get outta this place, don’t we?”
They sh
ut the gurneys, closed the doors and switched off the light. There was no way to hide the smashed door jamb, so Frank broke open a glass cabinet and took some meds out to make the break-in appear to be kids stealing drugs.
Back in the car and down the road some more.
“We gotta kill ourselves a man and a woman.”
“Not a couple though.”
“No. Too hard to do and too obvious for the cops.”
THEY WERE SILENT as they came to terms with the reality of what they were contemplating. Mary Lou understood why they had to kill two people but she wasn't happy about the situation. Frank saw matters differently: the deaths of strangers would give him his freedom and secure his life with Mary Lou.
After twenty minutes they reached a town called Baker. There were at least three streets with stores and behind the residential area lay a small airstrip. Planes arrived occasionally but there were enough coming and going to create a flow of people through what would otherwise be a tiny gathering of country folk.
Frank and Mary Lou waited in the airstrip parking lot because someone flying out of town would not be missed for a while. The wait lasted only ten minutes as a car pulled in at the edge of the parking area away from the terminal. They followed it and parked nearby.
A man in his early thirties got out of the vehicle and took out a case from the trunk. The guy was around Frank’s height and build.
Mary Lou stood back as Frank walked a few paces behind him and looked both ways. He saw no-one, raised the shovel and slammed it into the guy’s head. He stumbled forwards and collapsed. Mary Lou caught up and helped drag the traveler to his car and dump him in their trunk. Frank returned to grab his case so it could join its erstwhile owner.
“And now we have a replacement car equipped with keys and free baggage filled with clothes for me, I hope.”
They drove round the lot twice in case a woman turned up to make their job easier, but no luck. Instead, Mary Lou motored out the lot with the body in the back and let the vehicle purr around the Baker residences. An hour later she was still driving up and down but no single females were on the streets that day.
“Let’s make some house calls. This is getting ridiculous.”
“Sure, babe.”
She pulled in and parked next to a huddle of suburban bungalows. Mary Lou got out and headed towards one property while Frank walked round the back and vanished from her sight.
The first house she tried gave no reply, but the second produced more success. A man appeared and Mary Lou asked directions to the airstrip. She thanked him and hunkered two houses down before trying again. This time a woman opened the door.
“Hi, before you start, I'm not interested.”
“Oh, I'm not selling anything. I'm new in town - just moved in across the street - and I was hoping I might borrow a cup of sugar. It’d be most neighborly of you.”
“Sorry, we get so many sales reps round here. It’s a defense mechanism.”
“I understand. I’ll end up doing the same in a few months time, I'm sure.”
Those were the last words the woman heard because Frank’s hands were clamped around her throat and he dragged her backwards and snapped her neck in a single twist. Mary Lou ran inside and closed the door. She scampered into the bedroom and took some clothes out of wardrobes until she had a reasonable sized pile on the bed. She rifled through the woman’s toiletries too, grabbing a perfume and a hairbrush. When she returned to the hallway, Frank had thrown a wallet on the floor and was stuffing notes into his pocket.
“This can look like she cut and run away. We can leave the cops to figure the reason.”
There was no evidence of anybody else living in the bungalow - something Frank had checked before he’d scratched the life out of Emily. That was the name on her ID.
Frank and Mary Lou rolled the woman into a blanket, careful to tuck in both ends. They carried her over to the car and dropped her into the trunk too. With the guy’s body already there, he pushed down hard to get them both to fit. But in the end all was good.
Next Frank sat behind the wheel and returned to the airport lot so Mary Lou could follow him in the new car back toward the general store.
Half a mile short of that destination, they stopped and Mary Lou turned the vehicle round to face in the opposite direction. She parked on the verge, ten feet away from the highway. There were few cars on the road that afternoon which gave them the opportunity to wrestle the bodies into the front seats.
Frank siphoned gas from the tank and spread it inside the vehicle. He placed some bank notes in a valise he’d stolen from Emily. Not much: three hundred dollars.
Mary Lou lit a match and threw it through the window. Orange flames licked the upholstery and traveled across the back seat. With the windows open, the small flames grew into yellow flickering wisps and leaped onto the driver’s seat until the whole inside filled with heat, darting flames and acrid smoke.
They hopped into the guy’s car and motored towards Baker - still in silence.
“That should get the Feds off our tail.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“We’ll figure out something else - but it should. They’ll have two bodies and some bank notes. Even they should be able to work out that equation.”
Mary Lou nodded, knowing Frank was right and that once you’ve murdered one person, you might as well make it three because you can only fry in the mercy seat once in your life.
31
DRIVING DOWN THE road, Frank kept a hand on Mary Lou's thigh and left the other hanging on the wheel, five miles below the limit. They remained without talking for an age until she punctured the silence.
“That’s not the end of our problems.”
“No, babe.”
“There’s the mob to deal with and then Frankie.”
She spat out the last word like a ball of mucus had landed on her tongue.
“Once we’ve laundered the cash, we should be able to negotiate with New York. If we give them their tithe, we might survive if we stay in this country.”
“So if they don’t catch up with us that’ll leave Uncle Frankie.”
“Yeah.”
“He'll want the money.”
“There’ll be guys on the road after us by now. Who knows who it was watching those Vegas lockers.”
“Do you think we did for one of Frankie’s men?”
“Or the mob’s. Neither is good.”
“No, murder isn’t good.”
“Not quite what I meant. If it was Frankie’s goon or an East Coast goon. We’ve killed one of theirs. Spilled blood gets paid with spilled blood - not an apology and a payoff.”
Mary Lou pondered for a minute, eyes darting left and right as though she must now be hyper-aware of any sudden movement in case it is a goon seeking revenge with a gun.
“What are we going to do? We can’t live like this for the rest of our days.”
“We must make peace with everyone. It’s the only way.”
“Even if we leave the country?”
“They can cross the border as easily as you and I.”
“What can we do about Frankie?”
“Reason with him and convince him to give up the chase.”
“We have gunned down his men, hon’.”
“And he was expecting to get his hands on a large amount of money we have in our trunk.”
Mary Lou giggled.
“There is that.”
“He’s not laughing though.”
“Do I look like I care?”
“Probably not, but he does and we must focus on that.”
“We’re in the middle of nowhere but when we find a phone, we should talk and try to get him to agree to call off the hounds.”
“Do you think he will?”
“We’ve got a better chance if we ask than if we carry on running.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.”
Beat.
“Truth is I have no idea a
t all. But if we do nothing, he’ll keep on coming until he takes all the money off us.”
FRANK LAGOTTI SENIOR liked the Kitkatt Club - not because it made him an amazing amount of cash each week, which it did, but because it gave him amazing access to pussy. These two items were the most important things in his life - two passions he could not quell.
While he counted his marriage to Fran Lagotti in decades and not years, they remained together for a simple, irrefutable reason: they were Catholic and a divorce was impossible. And anyway, she was a good cook and ensured his clothes were cleaned and pressed.
When you are a Shylock, you don’t always get paid back. On these occasions you can break bones or take advantage. Frankie became the majority owner of the Kitkatt Club because its founder was a terrible gambler and handing over the stock was the only way for him not to be thrown off the top of a tall building. Fair trade.
The reason the club made so much money was that it had two revenue streams. First was the bar where men came to drink overpriced hooch away from their wives and girlfriends. Second, there were the girls: the place was a strip joint and an occasional cathouse depending on the clientele.
Frankie sat near the back so he could keep an eye on his investment and enjoy the show. With all the troubles with his step nephew, Frank and the skirt Mary Lou, he needed to relax a little. The last few days had been stressful. He never wanted to deliver bad news to New York and his conversations with Pentangelo had been tense at best.
To relieve this tension, Frankie had taken the girl known as June into one of the private rooms and fucked her from behind. After, he threw her out because she’d been stealing notes from patrons’ wallets. That was not good for business. Now he sat and watched April and May on stage. April wore red panties and May wore green. They had both already got out their tits and Frankie enjoyed the scene. June’s titties had been too small for his taste but he wouldn't have to see them again.
There were only a handful of customers in the room but it was early yet, only seven. These guys were on their way home and would leave in the next thirty minutes or they were from out of town and were here until the morning.
The Lagotti Family Series Page 40
