Читать книгу November Road - Lou Berney, Lou Berney - Страница 13

Saturday afternoon Barone caught his flight to Houston. On the plane he flipped through last month’s Life. NASA had picked fourteen new astronauts. Buzz cuts, bright eyes, square jaws. Barone couldn’t tell them apart. God and Mom and country. If they wanted to strap themselves to a bomb and go flying through space, Barone wasn’t going to stop them.

The guy sitting next to him was from Dallas. He told Barone that everyone in his office cheered when they heard the news about Kennedy. Good riddance. The guy said he didn’t know what was worse about Kennedy, that he was a Catholic or a liberal or loved the Negroes so much. Dollars to doughnuts, Kennedy probably had some Jew blood, too. The guy had it on good authority that the Oval Office had a special phone line direct to the Vatican. Jack and Bobby took their orders straight from the pope. The newspapers covered it up because they were owned by Jews. How did Barone like that?

“I’m Catholic,” Barone said. It wasn’t true, or not any longer, but he wanted to see the guy’s face.

“Well …” the guy said. “Well …”

“And I’m married to a colored girl. She’s meeting me at the airport if you want to say hello.”

The guy stiffened. His lips disappeared. “There’s no need to get smart with me, friend,” he said. “I’m not trying to start any trouble.”

“It’s all right with me,” Barone said. “I don’t mind trouble.”

The guy looked around for a stewardess to witness Barone’s poor manners. When one didn’t appear, he harrumphed and flapped open his newspaper. He ignored Barone the rest of the way to Houston.

A quarter to six, the plane landed at Municipal. Barone stepped out of the terminal in time to catch the last light of day burning on the horizon. Or maybe just a refinery flaring off gas. The air in Houston was even wetter and heavier than it was in New Orleans.

One of Carlos’s elves had left a car for him in the airport parking lot. Barone tossed the briefcase in back. Under the seat was a .22 Browning Challenger. Barone didn’t think he’d need a piece, but no one ever ended up in a morgue drawer by being too careful. He removed the screw-on can and checked the barrel for crud. He checked the magazine, the slide. The Browning was accurate up close and fairly quiet.

The guy from the plane walked across the lot. Barone put the front sight on him and followed along until the guy found his car, got in, drove off. Maybe some other time, friend.

Traffic. Barone inched along. It took him twenty minutes to get to Old Spanish Trail. The Bali Hai Motor Court was an L-shaped cinder-block building, two stories high, canted around a pool. Every few seconds the glow in the pool shifted from green to purple, from purple to yellow, from yellow to green again.

Barone parked across the street, in front of a bulldozed barbecue joint. Most of this side of Highway 90 was already a construction site, the roadhouses and filling stations and motor courts torn down to make room for a new stadium and parking lot. When it was finished, the stadium would have a roof, a giant dome you’d be able to see from miles away. Astronauts and an Astrodome, the future. So far only a few curved steel girders had been raised. They looked like the fingers of a hand trying to claw up through the crust of the earth.

The Bali Hai had two separate sets of stairs that led up to the breezeway on the second floor. Barone had been out last week to look the place over. One set of stairs at the far north end of the building. One set in the middle, crook of the L, in back. Only the maid used those stairs. You couldn’t see them from the pool or the highway or the office.

The mark had the room on the second floor that was closest to the middle stairs. Number 207. Seraphine said that the mark would check in around five. Barone couldn’t tell for sure if he was in the room yet or not. A light in the room was on, but the curtains were drawn.

Barone settled in. If he was lucky, the mark would step outside for a breath of fresh air. Some guys didn’t mind doing a hit on the cuff. Barone, no. He liked to be as prepared as possible. Seraphine said the mark was a big boy. Barone wanted to see how big, with his own two eyes.

The mark was an independent contractor from San Francisco, going by the name of Fisk. That was all Barone knew about him. That, and he was good with a scope. Long-range shooters tended to be oddballs. Barone had known one guy, years ago, who could barely tie his shoelaces by himself. But point out a German in the bushes three hundred yards away and pow.

Thirty minutes passed. An hour. Barone yawned, still thinking about the war. In Belgium once he fell asleep in his foxhole while his company waited for the Germans to come out of the woods at them. The sergeant shook Barone awake and asked if he had a screw loose, how calm he was all the time.

Maybe Barone did have a screw loose. He’d considered the possibility. But what if he did? There was nothing he could do about it. You’re born a certain way. You stay that way. Everyone got what they deserved.

It started to rain. The sign for the Bali Hai featured a hula girl with a neon grass skirt that shimmied back and forth. The rain and the light from the sign and the headlights from the cars driving past formed strange shapes on Barone’s windshield, slow, sinuous dancers. He hummed along, Coltrane’s solo from “Cherokee.”

At a quarter till nine, the rain stopped. A minute later the door to 207 opened and the mark, Fisk, stepped out onto the breezeway. A big boy, all right. Seraphine hadn’t exaggerated. Six foot two or three, with a barrel chest and a thick slab of gut that made his arms and legs look spindly. Around fifty years old. He was playing tourist, dressed in a short-sleeved Ban-Lon shirt the color of brown mustard, a pair of checkered slacks.

He lit a cigarette and leaned against the wooden balcony rail. The deep end of the pool was right beneath his room. The reflection rippled over him, the glow shifting. Purple, yellow, green. When he finished the cigarette, he flicked it away and took out a comb. He ran the comb through his thinning hair. A lefty. See? Seraphine hadn’t mentioned that. That was why Barone liked to take his time, gather his own information.