November Road. Lou Berney

the spring, sure, when the bass were biting. But in November? “When’s he coming home?” Guidry said.

      “I don’t know.”

      She smiled, no strain showing. But Guidry could feel it. Something. Fear? He looked past her, into the house, and saw a suitcase by the kitchen door.

      “My sister in Shreveport.” Esme answered the question before Guidry could ask it. “I’m taking the bus up to visit her this weekend.”

      “How can I get hold of Armand?” Guidry said.

      “I don’t know. Good-bye, Frank.”

      She shut the front door. Guidry walked slowly back to his car. Armand was dead. Guidry resisted the conclusion, but it was the only one he could draw. Armand had been bumped, like Mackey, and Esme knew it. She was scared out of her wits that Carlos would come after her if she breathed a word. Smart lady.

      Mackey had been bumped because he’d arranged for the sniper.

      Armand had been bumped because … That was easy. Because he was Carlos’s most discreet and reliable source of weapons. You wouldn’t know to look at Armand, at the scrapyard shack, but he could get any kind of gun and move it anywhere.

      The evidence mounted. Carlos was clipping the threads that connected him to the assassination. Who next but Guidry?

      No, don’t be ridiculous. Guidry was a valuable asset, et cetera, his perch in the organization only a branch or two beneath Seraphine’s, et cetera. Though that wasn’t as encouraging a notion, Guidry realized, as he’d first assumed. From up here he could see it all, he could see too much, he could put all the pieces together.

      And what about that jittery deputy chief in Dallas, the reason Seraphine had sent Guidry to Dallas in the first place? Did that count as another strike against Guidry?

      As he crossed the bridge back over the Mississippi, the black water below reminded him of the dream he’d had last night. Omens and portents.

      Carlos and Seraphine could have used anyone in the organization to stash the getaway Eldorado in Dallas, someone disposable. Why did they use Guidry? Because, maybe, they’d already decided that his time was up.

      He rented a room at a cheap motel out in Kenner. He didn’t think that Seraphine would make a move before he dumped the Eldorado in Houston, but just to be safe. Guidry always kept a suitcase in the car. A toothbrush, a change of clothes, a couple grand in cash. Saturday morning he stood in the terminal at Moisant and studied the departure board. The flight to Houston that Seraphine had booked for him left at ten. A flight to Miami left at half past.

      Guidry could take the flight to Miami and try to disappear. Suppose, though, he wasn’t on Carlos’s list after all. If Guidry ran now, he’d shoot straight to the top of the charts, congratulations.

      If he ran, he would have to leave behind everything. His life. The smiles and the nods and the bellboys at the Monteleone scrambling to open the door for him, the beautiful redheads and brunettes eyeing him from across the room.

      His nest egg was back in the nest. How the fuck was he supposed to disappear forever with only a couple thousand bucks in his wallet?

      Seraphine might have someone at the airport watching him. Guidry didn’t overlook the possibility. So he moseyed over to the bar and ordered a Bloody Mary and chatted up the cocktail waitress. Not a care in the world, had Frank Guidry.

      After the last call from the gate, he boarded the plane to Houston. Carlos wouldn’t bump him. Seraphine wouldn’t let him. Armand and Mackey—they were beasts of burden, spare parts. Guidry was the right hand of the right hand of the king himself, untouchable. Or so he hoped.

      THE RICE, AT THE CORNER OF MAIN AND TEXAS, WAS THE swankiest hotel in Houston, with a pool in the basement and a dance pavilion on the roof. The Thanksgiving decorations were out—a papier-mâché turkey in a Pilgrim hat, a horn of plenty overflowing with wax apples and squash. But the lobby felt like a funeral, every step soft, every voice hushed. Kennedy had spent the night before his assassination in a suite here. Probably an enjoyable night, given the stories Guidry had heard about him.

      Guidry’s room on the ninth floor of the Rice looked down on the pay lot across the street. The sky-blue Cadillac Eldorado sat in the back corner, the sun winking off the chrome. Guidry watched the Eldorado for a while. Watched the lot. He counted his money again. Two thousand one hundred and seventy-four bucks. He called down and had room service bring up a club sandwich, a bottle of Macallan, a bucket of ice. Don’t think of it as a last supper. Don’t. He hung his suit coat on the back of the bathroom door and ran the shower, hot, to steam the creases from the wool.

      At four-thirty he walked across the street and tugged on his Italian calfskin driving gloves and slid behind the wheel of the Eldorado. South toward La Porte, window rolled down to flush out the lingering ghost of sweat and Camels and hair oil. Where was he now? The specialist from San Francisco who took the shot and then drove the Eldorado down from Dallas? Long gone, Guidry supposed, one way or another.

      He stuck to the speed limit, watched for a tail. A few blocks before he reached La Porte, he pulled in to the crowded parking lot of a Mexican restaurant.

      The backseat was clean. He popped the lid of the trunk. Why? Guidry couldn’t say for sure. He just wanted to know everything he could know. He’d been that way since he was running around in diapers.

      An old army barracks bag, olive-drab canvas with a drawstring neck. Guidry opened it. Inside, wrapped in a denim work shirt, was a bolt-action rifle with a four-power scope. A box of 6.5 millimeter shells, a couple of brass casings. Binoculars. The embroidered patch on the work shirt said DALLAS MUNICIPAL TRANSIT AUTHORITY.

      Guidry cinched the duffel back up and shut the trunk. East on La Porte, past a few miles of new prefab tract houses that would collapse if you sneezed on them. The houses gave way to the refineries and chemical plants and shipyards. After the Humble Oil refinery, last on the row, a long stretch of virgin swamp and pine. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods. Which doped-up English dandy had written that? Guidry couldn’t remember. Coleridge or Keats, Byron or Shelley. One of them. I love not Man the less, but Nature more.

      The sun sank behind him. It wasn’t much of a sun to start with, just a patch of shiny gray in the darker gray of the sky, like the worn elbow of a cheap blazer.

      No other cars, coming or going, not since he’d passed the Humble refinery. The unmarked road was a single narrow lane of broken asphalt and black mud gouged through the trees.

      Guidry turned onto it and then stopped. Go on? Or back up? He idled, thinking. His father used to play a game when he was a little drunk or a lot drunk or not drunk and just bored. He’d hold his hands in front of him and order Guidry or his little sister to pick a hand, right or left. You didn’t win the game. One hand was a punch, the other hand was a slap. Lose your nerve and fail to pick in time, you’d get one of each, good old Pop busting a gut he laughed so hard.

      The road led to a sagging chain-link fence. Gate open. The bottom half of the wooden sign clipped to the gate had splintered off. All that remained was a big red NO.

      Omens and portents. Guidry drove on, between the two rows of corroded metal drums, each one as big as a house. When he reached the dock, he put the Eldorado in park and climbed out. Something, the weedy muck at the base of the tanks, made his eyes burn—a rich, earthy shit-rot, a poisonous chemical tang.

      Guidry, once he turned seven or eight years, had refused to play his father’s game—he’d refused to pick left hand or right. A small act of rebellion that he paid dearly for, but Guidry didn’t like surprises. He’d rather take the punch and the slap than not know which one was coming.

      He looked around. He didn’t see a glint of metal, didn’t hear a rustle of movement. But he wouldn’t, would he?

      A heavy chain was looped between a pair of iron cleats, but the key was in the padlock. Seraphine had made this simple for Guidry. Or she’d made it simple for the man sent to kill him. Put Guidry in the trunk