Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 19:39:36 -0400 From: "J. Hall" Subject: Re: INT:Goldman Pictures, How nice a lady can be.. > "How far south?" > "Panama, where do you think? We are going to Mexico. Sleep. Now." > "I can't, not until you tell me how you killed those men in Lansky's >penthouse." > "I didn't kill anyone, what are you talking about?" > "Pull over." > > > > Lovely. Lovely car, a two-tone caddy ragtop, cream and crimson, just the thing forthe inconspicuous underworld thug when tooling around between leg breakings. It sighed to a halt, crunching gravel and little night things on a dirt shoulder of US 95, the Eldorado Mountains dead ahead. A bus coming up from Needles blew by, tossing her hair around in a wake of sage-dust and hot diesel anxiety, the slots of Las Vegas nervelessly awaiting the load of eager new acolytes aboard. I killed the radio, cutting off Kay Starr in mid-moan. Lovely girl, cuts the cards with the most dangerous man in America with only herself as collateral for a chokehold on the gravy train of vice her uncle had clawed out of Mickey Cohen's frogmarch into the pen. She probably never even considered losing. I touched her bare, outstretched arm quietly and felt hot luck and long, ropy muscles ripple under the cinnamon tan. It was like touching an elemental, and I savored the moment. There would probably not be very many like this again. Lovely suit. Como had taste. I loosened the tie and realized I had left two of my own suits behind for the taking in backrooms in the last two days. The brown one I'd been shot in by a hermaphroditic revivalist from Glendale and hadn't fit since Mamoulian's Cleaners had done some stitchwork to de-ventilate the shoulders. The grey flannel I'd left with Fleming was a finder's fee in kind for services rendered to a wardrobe custodian at RKO. Pinstripes were out this year anyway. Maybe Reinie would knit me a new sportcoat. Or maybe she'd just send Bruno to the Beverly Glen Polo Club to shake down a few layabout Ukrainian nobles for their summerwear. Lovely mess. The attache case full of bundled thousands sat on my lap. "We have a little problem," I said, and for a moment considered opening it but then, she'd seen money before. "I didn't kill anyone!" Reinie shouted. I jumped a little. A pickup heading south lit up the interior of the caddy framing her face in a pair of hi-beams. When it zoomed up the grade and vanished around a bend, I explained what I'd seen in Costello's room. "You have to be out of your goddamn mind to think I'd sneak in and ice one of Frankie's guys," she said wearily. "I wish you'd stop picturing me as some sort of Lucretia Borges." "Borgia" "Whatever." "Victor is the Borge." "Uhuh." "No S," I grinned. "No shit." She was not smiling. "You are so lucky, Reinie. So incredibly lucky. Did your mother dip you in the River Styx or was the game rigged?" She paused, then bit her lip, trying not to smile. "I learned cards from my father. He said I had a special sight." I slid over and put my arm over her shoulders and leaned back to stare at the new stars. She pushed her head into the crook of my neck and continued. "Sometimes I can see things before they happen," she said, and I kissed her forehead, hoping she could see a way out of this. "Once, when I was 9, I took a deck of cards and dealt myself five poker hands, face down. I ran my fingers over the top of the cards, just to touch them and picked one. It was a full house, kings over nines. The others were dogs." I shifted slightly, the .38 poking me in the kidney. "I did that fifteen straight times," she said, her voice full of wonder. "Eventually my father made me stop, he said it was bad mojo to push fate around." "Well it was for him, anyway," I said, tracing a finger around her earlobe. She grabbed my hand and bit it, not lightly. I yelped and sat up. "You can bet on that, baby," she chuckled, and kissed the tip of my finger. "Did I hurt you?" I said no. Not yet. Reinie shook her head slowly, her pupils deep black in the shadows. "I won't. I promise. I'm nothing like him. Like Tony or Costello or Lansky or Lucretia von what'shername. Nothing." On that I had to agree. Lucretia used poison. But I remembered the way she'd looked at Costello and a little Tex Avery voice in my head keened at me from a great distance singing 'you'll be sorrrreeeee' as she brought the Cadillac to life. "Do you have any idea where you're going, then?" I asked, taking my fingers back and counting them. They were all there. "Mexico, of course." I sighed. That was probably what DeLauro and the others expected, but there was a certain logic in hiding out for a while. "We have to get rid of this battleship, first off, Reinie. Once it's light we'll be easy to spot and I don't think Lansky is going to spare any expenses finding me." "Us," she said. "Us. You really think you hold Tony's marker?" She threw back her head and laughed, and then pulled a little slip of paper out from the neckline of her dress. "Oh don't you know it!" she said and passed it over to me. In the dark it looked like a sheet of Altimira stationary, heavily scrawled upon by J. Fred Muggs. "Is this even in English?" I said, and passed it back. She folded it back up and slipped it down between her breasts, snickering. "Legal schmeagle,sugar ," she answered, and I refrained from asking how legal a gambling marker written in what appeared to be a mixture of Yiddish and Martian by Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello would be in a California courtroom. Instead I explained that as far as Mexico went, you couldn't get there from here. "So direct me," Reinie said. "Isn't that what you Hollywood types always want to do, direct?" I shrugged and looked out the window down into the basin that Las Vegas lay percolating away in. "Not me," I replied. "Personally I'd rather be Holden's body double when he gets to kiss Nancy Kwan." She swatted me. I swatted back. A chorus of desert crickets worked on a few numbers and she blew out a long breath. "Wise guy." "Me?" I said innocently. "Ok drive then. Stay on this road until we get to Blythe, down in the desert. There's a guy there who might be able to help us if he hasn't plowed into Mesa Verde by now. Wake me up and we'll swap places at the first gas station you find. I need to sleep on a few ideas." She said something that could have been "sweet dreams" but I couldn't tell. Reinie revved the engine hard and pulled out onto the freshly paved highway, fishtailing off the gravel. I crawled over into the corner of the huge front bench seat and closed my eyes, exhaustion taking me for a different kind of ride. I dreamed about Paris after the war, when I'd stayed behind with a team Of Venus fixers to find stolen old masters. A major with the unlikely name of Art Pert had me knocking on the doors of every cathouse on the Left Bank, using me as a scout to ferret out canvases the Germans had left behind and which perhaps the local dishabille would rather not have found too quickly. We found very little, but it was interesting work and the duty was hardly hazardous unless you counted bite marks and occasional deep back scratches. Paris was a grateful city. "Who the hell is Sherille?" I blinked, then wished I hadn't. "Old French teacher," I groaned and sat up. We were parked behind a crumbling adobe hut hung with rusting tin adverstisements for Bardahl and Gibson Girl and I swiveled around with slitted eyes. Nothing but nothing. I waited for my eyes to adjust to a floodlight sun and when they did, I saw Reinie chewing on the end of a half-finished Sherman, her face tired, her mouth set in a hard line. "French teacher." "I was her best pupil." "Was she prettier than me?" I reached for the Sherman and took a deep drag off it. My tux was covered with half of Nevada. "Reinie," I started, then realized she was kidding. Noone I knew was prettier than her. Even with her hair standing out like one of Elsa Lanchester's wigs, she was stunning. My heart found the sheet music again and started tuning up. If love wasn't in the air, something like it was and I sneezed mightily. We changed places, my stomach growling, and slid back onto the highway, running on fumes, a passing touch of fingers and the devout hope that one Lex Tallner was not dead. Or dead drunk. "I see it, there it is." Reinie tugged on my sleeve. A mailbox with the name A. Tallner leaned precariously over a pair of cow skulls beside a dirt track that led off into the desert, a distant pair of dark mounds the only sign of habitation. I slowed and turned, the car sluggish with lack of fuel. "I thought you said his name was Lex," she said warily. "Her name actually. Alexa." "Another of your French teachers?" She drummed her nails on the dashboard. "I doubt if Lexie speaks French. Spanish, si. French, non. Maybe a little Apache, some Chinese, a smattering of Indio-" "Lexie." Drum. Drum. Drum. The mounds grew into a pair of oversized Quansett huts, each open at one end, blank dark rectangles against the trees where the Colorado River wound a mile or two beyond. "She's a pilot," I said, "and she's old enough to be my grandmother. Hell, I wish she WAS my grandmother. Lexie's still alive. I hope." She was. I saw the Bellanca parked behind the first hut, gleaming. A nut brown figure in overalls held together mostly with grease ambled out of a doorway carrying a Winchester. "Good Jesus, look what's washed up on the morning tide," she crowed, and clicked her fingers at a napping mastiff. The dog perked, looked at us and decided we weren't sufficient snack material and went back to sleep. "Hullo Lexie," I said. She put the rifle down and stood in the sun shaking her head. At me, the car, or Reinie I wasn't sure. "You fall off a wedding cake, son?" I looked down and realized Como's tux was almost grey with dirt. "Right into the snickerdoodles, Lex." Reinie lifted her sunglasses and went 'ummm?'. I took her hand and laced fingers and squeezed, hoping she got the 'follow along' message. I held our locked hands up toward her and made a formal introduction. "Alexandra Tallner, this is my wife, Lareine." Fingernails dug into my palm as she grinned. "Reinie, this is Lexie. She's going to fly us down to Acupulco for our honeymoon. Aren'tcha Lex." I bit the inside of my cheeks and smiled sweetly. Mr. Charming Detective smiles. Lexie spit something into the dirt and coughed a sharp laugh out. "You got married again? I thought you said the last time that you were-" I cut her off at the pass. "Yes, of course, the last one. Heh-heh, the last one, well she got religion and left me for a missionary in the Congo," then leaned over and gritted "Lex's drinks the coolant out of the engines, her memory is a little unreliable" into Reinie's ear. Claws again. "So is yours," she said out of the side of her mouth. "What last one?" "She won't take us if she thinks we're not married," I hissed back. "Lexie's funny that way." "Fine," she shot back. "What last one?" "I'll ..tell...you...later," I said, my smile fixed like Charlie McCarthy's. "Oh I KNOW you will," she said, pleasant as a milkmaid. We turned back to Lexie, who was still talking. "Well, I'll give you the same rate, if you want," Lexie said, and cocked an eye at Reinie. "He broke again?" "Better not be," Reinie said. "But you know how these California men are. Spend, spend, spend. He's very studious though. I just hope we can afford all the language classes he takes." Ouch. I could feel my palm growing furrows you could plant wheat in. Reinie disengaged and took Lexie by the arm, and the two of them went inside the hangar. Old chums, instantly. I looked at the dog and winked. He lifted a heavy lathered snout and growled at me. Communist. An hour later the big gull winged Bellanca was roaring over the border, following the Colorado down to the sea. Reinie started counting the money before I'd seen the first fishing boat. I leaned over and asked her if I could see Tony's marker again. "Umm," she grinned, fanning a sheaf of hundred dollar bills like Hemingway on the veranda of Loco Joe's, "why don't you get it yourself?" So I did. Lexie turned, saw us and turned back. "Honeymooners," she spat, and banked the plane hard over with a snort. to be continued.... --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "I've gone way beyond afraid. Right now I'm somewhere between bedwetting and a near death experience." --Rizzo tottering, but afoot for the moment: E k k l i p s i o n : http://members.xoom.com/Ekklipse/NewHome.html