No one was waiting for us when we arrived back at the Sheriff’s Department. It was a surprise and it wasn’t; I’d half-expected to find Colt Tanner there, wanting every detail, and reprimanding me for going off without involving him.
There was no sign of Lizzie either. I figured she must have gone back to the motor court to keep the meet with Tanner when I hadn’t come back. I had no desire for her to see me in cuffs, but I badly wanted her to see Nancy Hill in the flesh, so she’d know that all her sacrifices had been worth it.
They took Nancy out first, leading her across the parking lot as I looked on. She was still wearing my suit coat. It dwarfed her, making her appear smaller, younger, nothing at all like the woman I’d found hours before. They hadn’t bothered with cuffs, but her shoulders were tensed and rigid, and her eyes were wide, as though she’d never risk shutting them again.
I realised then I was thinking of her as a trophy, something to be held up as a sign of validation – not as a young woman who’d passed a night seeing things no one should have to witness. And god knew what in the weeks before. Not that any of it felt like a triumph; with Lang in the emergency room and three women still missing in the desert, the word that kept coming back to me was botched.
*
Emotions were running high inside the department – you could sense it, just walking the hallways. I was marched to an empty room, pushed onto a wooden chair and peppered with questions by a new deputy. I lost track of how long for, the same ones coming around again. He shifted between threats and conciliation, the strain showing as he smoked butt-to-tip throughout the interrogation.
I gave him the same lowdown on the gunman I’d given to Bryce. I told him I’d been deputised. I skirted the specifics of what had led to us being at the ranch, saying only that I’d been helping Lang with his investigation.
After my third description of the shooter revealed no further details, he ran out of steam. The questions came at a slower clip until they petered out all together. There were gaps as wide as a canyon in my story, but he skimmed over anything didn’t pertain directly to the trigger man and his movements – identifying and locating him their only focus for now. Satisfied he couldn’t glean anything further from me on that score, he kicked me back to a holding area next to the booking desk.
From there I was ignored. It felt as though they didn’t know what to do with me now, all their attention elsewhere. I saw Nancy Hill and one of the other women being taken from one room to another and I resisted the urge to call out to her. After an hour, I asked a passing officer when I could go and was told only to sit down.
As I retook my seat, a commotion flared at the booking desk. A man was jamming his finger into the tabletop, demanding to be taken to his client. His suit was too well cut to be local – LA or New York, maybe – and his act smacked of courtroom theatrics. The duty officer was working hard at keeping a lid on his temper, and it confirmed my thought the attorney had to be a heavy hitter to garner that measure of leeway in a tinderbox situation. I heard the sergeant direct the man to calm down, calling him Mr Curzon as he did. The name rang a bell – the lawyer Lang had told me always showed up to spring Siegel’s men. The sergeant was insistent: ‘We don’t have him, Vic. I’m telling you we don’t have him.’
Curzon threatened to inspect the cells himself, but was already heading for the parking lot. He hadn’t put a name to his client, but it had to be Rosenberg he was there for, and a picture started to emerge. The last I’d seen Rosenberg he was sitting in Tanner’s car; Tanner slipped away before the sheriff’s men turned up; now even Rosenberg’s own attorney didn’t know where he was at. Putting it together, it seemed plain Tanner had decided Rosenberg was too big a prize to give up to the locals.
I turned that over some more. Tanner had been insistent about keeping his operation a secret from Siegel and his men. Taking Rosenberg brought an end to all of that – meaning he had to feel he was close to his end game. His plan was always to break Siegel’s outfit open from the inside – and there was no one better placed to do so than Rosenberg. Keeping him out of the hands of a Sheriff’s Department bent on exacting revenge might be leverage enough. The logic felt solid, even if it represented a change of tack for Tanner. It made me sick to think Rosenberg would be the man to catch a break when the hammer came down.
I watched the room. Some of the night shift from the ranch were hanging around, dusty and dead on their feet but waiting for word from the hospital. Scuttlebutt held that the rest were out with the day shift hunting for the green Pontiac carrying the shooter – that part of my story being accepted as fact, it seemed. Figure they were trying to corroborate it with the others they’d swept up. I thought back over how it’d all gone down, Nancy Hill still behind the house when Lang got shot. I’d heard nothing in the chatter to suggest Lang was awake, so either they believed my story, or someone else was talking.
I asked to use a telephone to call my wife. The expected denial never came, reinforcing my sense that the prevailing state among the men was exhausted confusion. I was taken to a desk and a clerk stood over me as I dialled. I made a show of fumbling the receiver and asked him to remove the cuffs. He went off through the crowd and then returned with a key, looking over his shoulder as he came back, distracted by something in the adjoining room.
The operator connected me to the motor court but there was no answer from our room. I had the call re-routed to the office, asking the man that picked up if he’d seen Lizzie, but he told me he’d just come on shift for the day and had no idea if she’d been back there. The clerk waiting with me was fully diverted now, so I pretended to carry on the conversation while I cut the call and dialled Colt Tanner’s office in Los Angeles – but the line just rang out. I couldn’t stop remembering Rosenberg’s threat about Lizzie, and the only thing that gave me hope was that if I couldn’t find her, neither could anyone he might send after her.
I was still holding the receiver when the first cheer went up. It started in the adjoining room, the one the clerk was looking towards, and quickly spread into the holding area where I stood. The place was filled with the sounds of clapping and whooping, and it had to be that good news had come in from the hospital. Two bottles of bonded appeared from nowhere and were passed around the sheriff’s men, riding on a wave of back-slaps and handshakes.
A deputy came through from the inner office and met with a hail of questions. He flipped a box to stand on it and started recounting the details of the call – Lang was awake and talking, the doctors saying he was out of the woods.
Every head in the room was turned towards him. The clerk watching me pressed into the back of the crowd, trying to hear better. No one was paying me any mind. There was a corridor a short way along from me. I hugged the wall and inched towards it. The deputy reeled off his victory line – ‘Sheriff’s wife says the docs want him to stay there as long as he can ’cause you’re all so damn ugly the sight of you could kill him!’ When the laughter kicked up, I slipped around the corner and into the hallway.
I jogged along it, trying to get my bearings. I passed an empty muster room and two closed doorways, then the corridor turned ninety degrees and passed a staircase that I recognised as the one I’d been led up from the cell block. I carried on, almost running now. I went through a set of double doors and then there were rooms on either side of me, the doors shut. I went from one to the next, pinballing along the corridor and peeping through the small windows, seeing one office after another.
Then – jackpot: Nancy Hill sitting alone on a gurney. I opened the door and curled my arm. ‘Let’s go.’
She startled, trying to look past me as if it were a trick.
‘We’ve got ten seconds to get out of here. Come on.’
‘Go where?’
I opened the door wider. ‘Home. Anywhere you say. It’s now or never.’
She slipped off the bed and stopped.
‘Please.’ I glanced behind me, checking the corridor. ‘Please.’
She started then – across the room in two steps, then out into the corridor. I closed the door behind us, overtook her and grabbed her wrist. We ran a few paces back past the staircase, made a right and burst out the back exit.
*
I flagged a cab a block from the department and gave him directions to the motor court. I sat in the back, along from Nancy Hill, both of us breathing hard.
‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ she said, looking at me and then out the back window.
‘I had to get you out. It’s my fault you were there in the first place.’
‘You said … you told me you were with the sheriff.’
‘I was – but he’s the only one can vouch for me. I don’t have time to wait for him to recuperate and tell it.’
She looked at me again, her mouth ajar but saying nothing, as if too many questions were coming to her at once. Finally, she said, ‘My mother, you spoke to her.’
I nodded. ‘She’s worried sick.’
‘What did she say?’ She feathered the skin along her collarbone. ‘What did you tell her?’
‘I didn’t know anything to tell her, except that I was looking for you.’
She studied me a long moment. ‘Why were you looking for me? Have we met?’
I looked away sharply, shaking my head. ‘It’s a long story.’
She watched me, waiting to see if I’d offer any more. We turned into the motor court and the cab pulled around to a stop. I fished a bill out of my pocket and held it out for the driver. Nancy said, ‘When can I see Ben?’
*
The man from the motor court’s office watched us through his window as I opened the door of our room. It was unlocked but Lizzie wasn’t inside. Our bags were on one of the beds and I tried to remember if that was how we’d left them the day before. Looking for a clue to Lizzie’s whereabouts where there was none.
There was no couch in the room so I dragged over one of the wooden chairs and held it for Nancy to sit. She flattened the back of her skirt with two hands as she did so. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’
‘Which one?’
‘About Ben.’
I was scouting around the room, checking if Lizzie had left a note for me. I stopped and looked at her. ‘Meaning Ben Siegel?’
‘Yes.’
I straightened slowly, the fondness in the way she spoke his name like a cockroach in my ear. ‘What do you want him for?’
‘He’ll be concerned.’
I could feel despair creeping over me at her words. I perched on the edge of the bed and a standing mirror opposite confronted me with my own reflection. The cuts Rosenberg left on my face were matted with dust and sand, almost black; my cheekbone was bruised and swollen; my white shirt was now a shade of grey, torn in several places.
I looked away, trawling my mind to think where to start looking for Lizzie. That I couldn’t think of a single safe place she might run to served as an indictment of the life I’d made for us.
I was thinking what the hell to say to Nancy next when I heard a car pulling up outside. She heard it too and snapped her head around to look. I snuck across the room with my finger to my lips and stood behind the drape. I expected to see a sheriff’s cruiser. Instead, I saw Colt Tanner.
I whipped around. ‘Go hide in the bathroom. Keep the door shut.’
She was already on her feet. ‘Who is it?’
‘I’ll explain after. Go.’
‘Is it the police?’
‘Yes. Go.’ I squared it as a white lie.
She crossed the room on her toes and shut herself inside without making a sound.
Tanner knocked on the door. I took a breath and opened up. ‘Is Lizzie with you?’
He frowned, shaking his head and stepping around me to come inside. ‘They let you out fast.’
I saw the man in the office peering over at us and got wise. ‘You have the manager keeping watch for me?’
He frowned, as if I were fussing. ‘I didn’t know when you’d get out.’
I stared, unblinking, wondering if the man had mentioned Nancy Hill being with me. It felt like I’d been silent a beat too long; I blurted the first thing came to mind. ‘My wife’s missing, do you know where she is?’
He arched his eyebrows. ‘No.’
‘She hasn’t tried to contact you?’
‘Not today.’
‘The Los Angeles number? Is anyone manning the—’
‘Charlie, I haven’t heard from her. I’d tell you.’
I slammed the door closed. ‘Rosenberg threatened to kill her. At the ranch, if I didn’t let him go.’
He nodded, his face grave. ‘He was cornered, I wouldn’t pay it undue heed.’
‘Clark County Sheriff’s don’t have him.’
He kept his face empty.
We eyed each other like card players, except we both knew I didn’t have a hand.
Finally, I said, ‘Did you let him make any calls?’
He remained impassive. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Goddammit, Colt, quit with the bullshit. I don’t care what you did with him, just tell me you didn’t let him make any calls.’
He looked at me dead on. ‘I’m not about to admit to knowing anything about Mr Rosenberg’s whereabouts.’
‘I brought you this far and you’re hanging me out to dry now?’
He stuck his thumb in his chest. ‘Me? You’ve played me for a fool every step of the way.’
My face flushed. ‘If you came here to dress me down—’
‘Dress you down? I could arrest you. How about obstruction of a Federal investigation? Hell, I don’t even need to bother with that – I can just take you back to the sheriff’s office and let them take turns bouncing your head off the floor.’
I was stunned, my comeback lodged in my throat.
‘How’d you do it?’ he said. ‘Just waltz right out the door?’
I flattened the hair on the back of my head. ‘Lang pulled through, he’ll smooth it over.’
‘Still, a hell of a risk to take, them all riled up that way.’
‘So’s snatching Rosenberg from under their noses.’
He opened his hand. ‘Who’s to say he was ever there? You? The girl?’
I felt as if he could see through walls.
He pushed his suit coat aside to put his hands on his hips. He stared at me that way for a long moment. Then he walked to the wooden chair and toed it like he understood the significance of it sitting in the middle of the room, all by itself. He sat down. ‘Why didn’t you clue me in to what you were doing?’
‘What?’ I could feel my neck twitching.
‘The ranch, the girls.’
I held a breath. ‘I never had a chance. By the time I had the address, they’d sent up a warning to Siegel’s men. I thought they’d kill her.’
‘I understand that but I mean before, the whole thing; why didn’t you tell me what you were doing back in Los Angeles?’
‘It wasn’t pertinent. At least at the start. Not for a long time.’
He watched me, his look as good as telling me I was lying. It riled me enough to fire back. ‘Besides, you knew already. You were at their guest house asking after me.’
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, eventually nodding once to concede the point. ‘I didn’t understand the relevance then. But you did as soon as you came here; you were wrong not to say something at that point.’
‘It unravelled fast. Would it have made a difference?’
He looked away, interlinking his fingers as if he was praying for patience. He got to his feet and went to the mirror, rubbing at one of the smudges as he looked into it. ‘As it happens, I didn’t come here to chew you out.’ He turned around.
I waited, saying nothing.
‘Look, the fact is, whatever your intentions and your cackhanded methods, you’ve had an effect.’ He put his hands in his pockets. ‘Siegel is gone.’
I took a step towards him. ‘What?’
‘My information is that after your actions last night, he went to the airport and hopped a flight to Mexico on a oneway ticket. Our working theory is that there’s no way he’ll get his licence now, which, apart from deep-sixing his plans, is an embarrassment to the money men back East, so he’s gone to ground. If we’re right, it ought to stay a one-way deal.’
I was lightheaded – Siegel gone. After everything he’d put us through. I wasn’t sure what to feel; relief, anger, a spool of emotion uncoiling inside of me. But just that – no violent lurch of feeling. ‘You can’t be satisfied with that.’
‘If I’m wrong and the door’s open for him to come back, then I won’t be. But that’s not my read on the situation.’
I knocked on the table with my knuckles, working up a rage thinking about the injustice. ‘What about your grand plans? What happened to blowing his organisation apart from the inside?’ I suddenly remembered Nancy in the other room and lowered my voice. ‘You never said anything about him getting off scot-free to sit on a Mexican beach.’
‘That’s not how I’d characterise the situation. You ever heard of a Federale wouldn’t off a gringo for a sawbuck? Think about it: every minute of every day, looking over his shoulder.’
‘He’s not another gringo, he has connections—’
‘Not if he’s running from them. They’ll cut him off faster than you can sneeze.’
I righted myself, eyeing him. ‘You’ve changed your tune because you’ve got Rosenberg on ice. You mean to make him sing instead of Siegel.’
He returned my look without speaking.
‘What deal are you offering him?’
He sighed, shaking his head as if there was nothing more to say.
I came around the table to stand in front of him. ‘Rosenberg killed Julie Desjardins, the girl they found in the desert. Did you know that?’
‘According to whom?’
‘Someone who’d know. Makes him the prime suspect for Henry Booker as well. To add to the list that includes Trent Bayless. Real swell guy to pick up a sweetheart deal from the Bureau.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I went to say something more but he had his two forefingers up, motioning for me to let him speak. ‘Look, you’ve had one hell of a night and you’re lashing out, I realise that. But I came here as an ally. There’s something you deserve to hear.’
I cocked my head, waiting.
‘Siegel issued a contract on you, before he left. We picked up on some chatter from a source in LA.’
My skin prickled. ‘What about Lizzie?’
He closed his eyes too long, and I knew even before he nodded.
I heard the faraway sound of another car pulling up outside, my senses overloaded by the scream inside my head. I drifted to the window to look, my eyes refusing to focus, my spine rigid but weak, like a stick of chalk. Tanner said something else but it was white noise to my ears.
I expected to see Siegel out there, even though it made no sense. Through the haze I saw a flash of red bounce out of the car. My car – the one I’d had to abandon at the Flamingo. She looked over and her eyes met mine. Seeing me, Lizzie darted the short distance the rest of the way across the lot.
I threw the door open and she crashed herself into my arms. She smacked me on the chest with the flat of her hand. ‘You swore you wouldn’t do that to me again.’
She must have seen Tanner over my shoulder because she drew back to compose herself, reddening.
‘Mrs Yates.’
‘Special Agent Tanner.’
I glanced at the car. ‘How did you … Did you go back to the Flamingo?’
She nodded. ‘That man has taken enough from us already. It was either that or stay here and …’ She looked at Tanner. ‘Well, anyway. You know.’
‘But what if …’ I looked at her in disbelief.
‘He wouldn’t be there at this hour, not after last night.’
I had to stop myself from saying how wrong she was.
She looked at me and then at Tanner. ‘Have I interrupted something?’
He broke the stare, swivelling away to lean on the wall. She turned to me. ‘Charlie?’
I took a breath, Lizzie watching me, stock-still.
‘Siegel’s gone,’ I said.
She waited, then said, ‘There’s something else. You’re as white as a sheet.’
I closed my eyes and told her.
Her gaze slid to the window behind me and she twisted her hands across her chest.
‘Who did he give the contract to?’ I asked Tanner.
He drew closer. ‘I don’t have that information. It might be open season – whoever wants to claim it.’ He glanced downward, holding a hand up in apology. ‘I didn’t mean for that to sound flippant.’
The room fell silent, the implications sinking in.
Lizzie was the first to speak. ‘What of it?’
We both looked at her.
She let her arms unfurl and fall to her sides. ‘That was his intention all along, so it needn’t change anything. We already knew we couldn’t go back to Los Angeles.’
Tanner was tapping his finger against his palm. ‘I don’t want to alarm you but the threat is more serious than that, Mrs Yates.’
‘I’m well aware how serious it is, Special Agent.’
He turned to me. ‘I can arrange some form of protection for you, if you’d stand for it this time.’
‘For how long? Indefinitely?’
He cleared his throat, giving no answer. I could feel Lizzie’s discomfort at the idea.
‘That’s what it would amount to, isn’t it? As long as Siegel’s on the lam,’ I said.
‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Will you give it consideration at least?’
I nodded, relieved he was shaping up to go.
‘I wouldn’t take too long thinking about it. It’s my strongest counsel that you remove yourselves from Las Vegas today – with or without my help.’ He stepped over to the door and stopped. ‘Did you have a chance to speak with the girl?’
My face drained again.
Lizzie laid her hand on my wrist. ‘Nancy Hill? You found her?’
I nodded and turned back to Tanner. ‘There wasn’t time. She was helping me search for the others and then they arrested us and kept us in separate cars.’
Lizzie screwed her face up. ‘Arrested?’
Tanner ignored her. ‘What about at the department?’ His eyes moved from mine to someplace behind me and it took all my restraint not to look around to the bathroom door.
‘No. Why do you ask?’
‘I mean to have a talk with her once the sheriff’s men have cooled down. With all of the women, but her in particular – seeing as how she came to be here from Los Angeles. If Siegel’s outfit transported her to Nevada for immoral purposes, it’s a violation of the Mann Act. The courts go wild for anything looks like white slavery – gives us a real chance to make something stick.’ He flicked his eyes behind me one more time and back again. ‘I’d like to make that plain to her.’
He opened the front door and held it. ‘Meantime, give my offer serious thought. I’ll have a man here in an hour to keep watch, but that’s strictly an interim measure.’ He went out and was gone.
Lizzie came over to me. ‘What was the meaning of that? What was he driving at?’
I planted my hands against the wall, seeing his angle as clear as day. ‘He wants me to deliver a message.’
‘To who?’
I waited until the sound of Tanner’s tyres on the gravel had faded and then crossed to the bathroom door.
‘Charlie?’
It was opened from inside before I could do it, and Nancy Hill came out. Faltering, uncertain steps.
‘Lizzie, this is Nancy.’
*
I sat on the bed watching Lizzie rifle through her bag for something Nancy could wear. She was two inches taller, and broader in the shoulders than Lizzie, but they agreed anything had to be better than a dress dotted with blood.
I’d already thrown my trousers and shirt in the trash and changed into fresh threads. It felt like the first step into a new life. Colt Tanner’s words were clear in my mind, his motives less so. I thought for sure he’d known Nancy Hill was stashed in the bathroom and he wanted me to convince her to tell the story the way he’d laid out. It made me furious that he gave no care to knowing what had really happened to her.
The girls settled on a patterned green shirtwaist number and Nancy went into the bathroom to change. Lizzie watched until she shut the door, then came over to me, putting her hand on my cheek. ‘How are you feeling?’
I offered a thin smile, nodding my head. ‘She’s in shock.’
She nodded. ‘I think she’s coping as best she can.’
I laid my hand over hers, savouring her touch. ‘She asked me when she could see Siegel.’
She glanced at the bathroom door. ‘She what?’ Her stare lingered as if she couldn’t believe my words. Slowly, she turned to me again. ‘You don’t think …’
I nodded, Lang’s take echoing in my ears – Siegel only cares for money or women. ‘He has a reputation as a charmer.’
She pulled a face in disgust. ‘But after what he’s done to her. How can she think that way?’
‘She’s young, maybe he seemed glamorous. A misplaced crush.’
She brushed her mouth with her fingertips. ‘That man is sickening.’
‘I don’t think she has a grasp on what’s happened to her. It could take a long time.’
I’d closed the drapes as soon as Tanner left. I went to the window and parted them to look out, counting it as the third time I’d done so in a half-hour. The other wings of the motor court were on either side of us, forming a U-shape, the parking lot spread in front, only our car and two others in view. The sky stretched above, a thin gauze of white cloud hardening the blue. ‘We need to get her away from here.’
Lizzie came over and took the drape from my fingers, smoothing it closed. ‘Charlie, what about us? What are we going to do?’
The bathroom door opened and I snapped around to look, whispering, ‘Disappear.’
Nancy Hill stepped out. It was jarring to see another woman in my wife’s dress.
I stood by the closed drapes, a glow from the daylight behind them, thinking how strange the situation must have seemed. Lizzie moved a little towards her, holding her hand out. ‘You must have a lot of questions.’
Nancy positioned herself on the far side of one of the beds. A barrier. ‘What that man said about Ben going – is he telling the truth?’
I looked at Lizzie, choosing my words. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You said he was with the police but you called him Special Agent.’ Her tone was flat.
‘Look, what’s important right now is that we get out of here. Will you let me take you home to Iowa?’
She shook her head. ‘You can’t make me go back there. I told you.’
I could feel Lizzie reach for my hand before she spoke. ‘Nancy, would you mind if Charlie and I stepped outside a moment?’
She didn’t wait for an answer, leading me to the door. I cracked it a fraction to check outside before opening it the rest of the way. We came out squinting in the bright daylight, the cold still like sandpaper on the skin. Lizzie went to speak but I glanced at the highway across the parking lot, the other rooms all around overlooking us. ‘We shouldn’t be out in the open.’ I took her arm and guided her to the car to sit inside.
When the doors were shut, she said, ‘Did you mean what you said back there? Iowa?’
‘It’s as good of a place to disappear as any.’
She frowned. ‘She said she doesn’t want to go.’
I rested my hand on top of the steering wheel. ‘Her mother’s worried sick. Nancy just needs time to adjust, it’s the best place for her.’
She looked thoughtful, her eyes distant. Then she focused on me again. ‘Shouldn’t we take her to the authorities?’
‘They arrested her, Liz. She’s the victim here but all they see is another whore. They’ll chew her up and she’ll either end up in a cell or back on the street.’
She tilted her head back, shaking it in resignation. ‘So no one pays. Again.’
I gripped my hands together. ‘I’ll make sure they do.’
‘In Iowa?’
I let out a long breath. ‘One day at a time. We play the long game. I promised you we could run as soon as we found her.’
She closed her eyes, interlinking her fingers and resting her chin on them. ‘I know.’
‘What’s the matter?’ The question sounded ridiculous spoken aloud. I was dangling a life on the run as a reward.
‘Perhaps I never believed the day would actually come.’
She looked away from me then, as if it was an admission of doubt in me. I couldn’t deny feeling the same.
A big rig strapped with lumber rumbled past on the highway, loud, even at a distance. I wondered if it was headed to the Flamingo. When the noise died, she said. ‘What about Colt Tanner?’
‘What of him?’
‘I worried you might be tempted by his offer of protection.’
I ran my hand over my mouth, buying a moment to confirm my own feelings about his offer still held. ‘I couldn’t face it – a life under guard. You?’
She shook her head. ‘Are you going to ask Nancy to speak to him before we take off? If she’s soft on Siegel I can’t imagine her telling it how he wants.’
I rubbed my temples, a throbbing pulse building in my head. ‘Liz, what did you say to Tanner after I left you at the Sheriff’s Department last night?’
She kept her eyes forward.
I waited a moment but she didn’t speak. ‘What?’
She slipped her mouth behind her fingers. ‘Charlie … I didn’t try to contact him. Please don’t be mad at me.’
I felt the same nervous rush as when he’d showed up at the ranch.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘There were just so many questions in my mind, I didn’t think he could be trusted. When you didn’t come back, I felt so awful. That’s why I went to the Flamingo again, I thought if I could at least retrieve the car that would be something. And we’d be able to get away when you came back.’
In my mind I was already running through the chain of events. The last time I’d seen him before the ranch was in this same parking lot, almost twenty-four hours previous, when he’d told me to go to the gala at the Flamingo. That was long before I’d tracked down Harry Heller and followed the trail from the Kitten Litter to Siegel’s ranch. So how the hell did he find me there so fast? Or was that asking the wrong question?
‘Charlie, say something.’
I blinked, returning to the moment. I heard a distant echo of my own voice and then realised I was speaking. ‘I think you made the right decision.’
*
We cleared out in a rush. I was determined to get gone before Tanner’s man showed up.
Nancy was adamant she wouldn’t go back to Iowa. Lizzie made a hurried effort to talk her round, but she dug her heels in – enough to make me question whether we were doing the right thing by her. But it came clear her reticence wasn’t born out of a desire to speak to the law – local or Federal; all she wanted was to see Siegel. I tore through a half-dozen ploys trying to get us out of the room, out of the motor court, out of Las Vegas.
In the end, it was a promise to head upstate to Reno that did the trick. It was close enough to the California line to tempt her. She made mention of holing up at a divorce ranch until he surfaced again, and it broke my heart to hear the fantasy she was living in. More so to play on it.
Reno meant heading west not east, but the old Lincoln Highway routed right through the town, before running all the way to New York City – and passing through Iowa on its way. It was a compromise I could work with.
The motor court was on the Reno Highway, so as soon as the bags were in the car, I sped out of there and put Las Vegas a dozen miles behind us before I even took a breath. Sheriff’s cruisers, Siegel’s men, maybe Tanner’s men – it felt like almost any car behind us could be a tail. Lizzie sat up front with me, Nancy in the back. I angled the rearview to be able to see her. I wanted to ask her so many things, but from experience of dealing with victims, I knew she’d speak only in her own time.
*
A hundred miles in, there was uninterrupted desert on all sides. The road was a two-lane, a solitary car visible behind us. It’d been back there less than ten miles. I felt sure no one had followed us, and somehow that made me more alert – as if some sleight of hand was at play that I had no way to detect.
Nancy Hill had only spoken once – to speculate on Siegel’s whereabouts, questioning whether he really would have gone to Mexico.
We stopped for gas and food in a busted mining town called Tonopah. I was checking the road as the attendant started the pump when I noticed Nancy gazing at an abandoned shaft headframe in the distance. She looked away when she saw me watching.
I asked if there was a payphone in town and the man said no, but I could use his line for a dollar. I made it up with coins and forked it over. I opened the back door of the car and ducked inside.
‘I’m going to make a call to your mother, you want to come with me?’
She shook her head. ‘You can tell her I’m doing fine.’
Lizzie looked at me, asking with her eyes if she should say something. I signalled to let it pass. ‘I’ll tell her you’re safe.’ I crouched down, hesitating. ‘There’s something else. About Julie – I should alert her family. Do you know how I can reach them?’
She looked over, at a loss. She shook her head.
‘What was her real name? Can you tell me?’
‘I don’t know.’
I kept my gaze on her.
‘She’s not from the same town as you?’
She shook again. ‘We met on the bus. In California.’
‘She never told you her name? Her hometown? Anything?’
‘She didn’t want to talk about it. That’s how Hollywood is, no one cares who you were before.’
The prospect of a family somewhere never knowing their daughter’s fate opened up a new fissure inside me.
*
There were black fingerprints all over the telephone’s housing. I lifted the receiver and dialled and it took a time for the operators to make the connections before they finally announced my name to Nancy’s mother. When she spoke, it was with a mix of hope and fear in her voice. ‘Mr Yates?’
‘Mrs Hill, I have your daughter with me. She’s safe.’
‘Oh—’ The line went quiet. There were muffled whimpers, as if she had her hand over her mouth.
‘We’re heading in your direction, but it’ll take a few days. Mrs Hill, did you hear me?’
‘Yes, I heard you. Blessed Jesus, oh, Mr Yates, you have no idea—I’m so relieved, I’m in your debt. I’m in your debt.’
‘I’ll call you again in a day or two to let you know our progress.’
‘Thank you. Mr Yates, thank you so much.’
I rang off, guilt tugging at me because I didn’t know if I could make good on my words.
*
It was another hundred miles and late into the afternoon when Nancy said, ‘It wasn’t how you think.’
She said it soft enough that I glanced at Lizzie to make sure I hadn’t imagined it.
I waited to let her speak again, but she offered nothing more. ‘What wasn’t?’
‘Ben loves me. He told me as much.’
Her eyes were wide as full moons in the rearview – imploring, certain.
‘Sometimes a man will tell a lady what he thinks she wants to hear.’
‘Don’t you think I know that? He had others, too, I’m not stupid. But I know what’s in his heart.’
Lizzie swivelled in her seat to face her. ‘Have you considered how he could make you do the things he did if that were true?’
‘No one made me.’
I saw her staring hard at Lizzie. In a murmur, she added, ‘At the start, anyway.’
‘But you can’t have … it wasn’t by choice.’
‘You can say that because you don’t know the alternative. We were flat broke. I had sixty cents to my name my last morning in Los Angeles.’
I was burning to ask her about Julie Desjardins, but feared she’d clam up if I was too direct. ‘Nancy, what happened when you went to the TPK lot?’
She took a sidelong look out her window. ‘We thought we knew what to expect.’
She was tiptoeing towards it. I watched her in the mirror. ‘How do you mean?’
Her mouth moved but she didn’t say anything at first, as if rehearsing how she’d tell it. ‘Nick Maskill approached us at a call we went to. He’s this big wheel at TPK. He said he could get us a private acting gig that paid well and said we should come down to his studio. Julie rolled her eyes when he called it that – she’d auditioned for him before, so she knew all about him. But he swore it wasn’t how it sounded, to come along and he’d explain. He promised us ten bucks just for showing up.’
‘When we went there that day, he treated us like we were already in pictures. He had one of his girls fix our hair and makeup, he took us to Wardrobe to pick out dresses for us, he gave us a script to read and had us do a screen test; it was fun. When he was happy with that, he asked all kinds of questions about where we came from and where we lived and things of that kind. Then when he was through, he told us we could keep the dresses and suggested we all go out to eat.’
There was control in her voice as she spoke, and a precision to her words that made me think she’d been practising this account for some time.
‘He drove us to Ciglio’s, this Italian joint on Hollywood Boulevard, and he bought us some wine and that’s when I met Ben – he came and joined us at our table and I recognised who he was right away. I could tell he liked me because he told me I looked beautiful. He stayed a little while and had a drink with us, and then when he left he winked at me and said maybe he’d see me again someplace else.
‘After that, Nick took us back to his house and I figured that’s when he’d want to get fresh. Julie said not to worry about it because she thought he was cute anyway. He opened champagne for us all and then he kissed Julie, but he was just kinda fooling around and she didn’t have any objections anyhow. Then sometime later he said we could live this way every day and earn a lot of money for doing it, if we’d just go to Las Vegas and keep some wealthy men company. He took two hundreddollar bills out of his billfold and put them on the table and said they were ours to keep if we agreed.’
‘I was tipsy so I didn’t know what to think. I blurted out that we’d have nowhere to stay, but Julie laughed at me and Nick said all of that would be taken care of. He made out like if we did it for a month, he’d bring us back and maybe have a part for us – kind of like we were in training. He told us everyone we’d ever heard of had done the same when they were breaking in.
‘Nick went off to make a call and next thing I knew, a car showed up and he said we should go right then. I was in two minds but Julie was insistent, she kept saying she couldn’t make the rent and Mrs Snyder would kick us out on the street. I was so tired by then I thought, why not? and went along with it. I was tipsy, it didn’t sound so bad. We were in Las Vegas the next morning.’
Listening to her tell it, it was clear she was still trying to make sense of the situation she’d got caught up in; maybe even explain her own actions to herself. The defiance, the insistence that no one had made her at the start – it was a trait I’d encountered in victims time and again; an underlying illusion of control, created by reassuring herself that even though she’d made bad choices, they’d been her choices to make. It worried me because it was the start of blaming herself for what had happened.
The other part that came through was guilt over what had happened to Julie. Taking pains to note Julie’s enthusiasm at every stage was Nancy’s way of signalling she couldn’t be blamed for her death – a sign of what she really felt.
‘You told me Rosenberg was responsible for Julie’s death.’
She nodded. ‘He was always a swine.’
Lizzie looked numb at all of it. She glanced at me and then turned back to Nancy. ‘How did you find out?’
‘He told us. He said he’d do the same to anyone else tried to steal from him the way she did.’
Beaten, strangled and stripped, left in the desert to be found. A warning to the others. ‘What did she steal?’
She faltered for the first time, her voice cracking. ‘The money. The hundred dollars.’
I saw it right away but Lizzie frowned in confusion. ‘The money they gave you in Los Angeles?’
‘He told us—The first night he came to the house, he told us the money was an advance and we all had to work it off. She …’ She moistened her lips but couldn’t finish.
‘Julie tried to run away,’ I said.
She covered her eyes and nodded.
Lizzie swivelled around fully to take her hand.
She sobbed in silence and I imagined her stuck in that ranch house having to do the same, too afraid to even make a sound.
We travelled that way for a long minute, the engine a relentless purr that sounded cold in its indifference to the young woman in the back.
Then she said, ‘It was because she’d tried it once before.’
‘Running away?’ Lizzie said.
She closed her eyes and nodded. ‘The first time, when that pig caught her, he brought her back and made us watch while he put a pillow over her face. I only figured out later it was because he didn’t want to leave a mark. He pressed it down while she was kicking and bucking, and no one even dared to scream. I thought he was going to kill her for sure. When he took it off her, he said if any of us tried it again, he wouldn’t be so gentle the next time.’
I could see the image in my mind. I glanced at Lizzie’s face, the welt he’d put there, and shook at the memory of his promise of what he’d do to her. Having no doubt he would, if given the chance. And now, instead of rotting in jail, he was sitting pretty under Colt Tanner’s wing.
*
We made Reno at dusk. An arch spanned the road on the edge of downtown; it read, ‘Reno The Biggest Little City In The World.’
We found a motel close to the Truckee River and holed up for the night. The proprietor took Nancy to be our daughter and we let him keep that notion.
Nancy asked to take a bath so I went outside to give her some privacy. I walked across the parking lot and stood on the edge of the highway, the river beyond it burbling in the darkness. I looked back down the road, following the line of the blacktop to where it met the night.
Lizzie came up behind me, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She stopped next to me and followed my gaze, the road empty. ‘Sometimes I wonder if there’s good in this world at all. That poor girl.’
‘I never imagined …’ I shuffled my feet, scraping them in the gravel. ‘Her story’s so much worse than I thought.’
‘You looked faraway. What are you thinking about?’
‘All of it.’
‘Siegel? And Rosenberg?’
I nodded. But there was more.
‘Do you think we did the right thing?’ She inclined her head towards the room.
‘Do you?’
She lingered, taking a breath. ‘I change my mind once an hour.’ She slipped her arm through mine. ‘I want so badly for those men to pay, that’s the part I have a hard time with. It feels as if they’re getting off lightly and I wonder if we’ve let that happen.’
‘She wouldn’t have spoken against Siegel.’
She looked at the ground, nodding. ‘I can’t understand how she can still have a care for him.’
‘She’s lost. There’s an avalanche of guilt and anger and blame waiting to hit her and the only thing holding it back is her infatuation for him. So she’s clinging to it.’
Something unspoken passed between us, and I wondered if I’d skated too close to our own circumstances in the wake of Alice’s murder. The chance it was still unfolding.
‘What will you do if she keeps refusing to go home?’ she said.
‘I’m hoping she’ll see sense when we get closer.’
‘What did her mother say on the telephone?’
‘Her emotions got the better of her. Thank you was about as much as she could manage.’
‘After everything and she still won’t speak to her.’ She shook her head. ‘They must have had some falling out.’
I turned to look at her then, surprised I hadn’t seen it myself.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘I never thought of it that way.’ My wife’s capacity for insight was startling; even in this, my own obsession, she saw things I’d missed. ‘I always assumed she was running to Hollywood. I never considered she’d be running from something.’
She kissed me on the cheek. ‘Don’t be hard on yourself.’ Her breath fogged in the air.
I felt her shiver and pulled her close. ‘Don’t get cold. You should go inside.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ll be along in a minute.’
She kept her eyes on me, reading me as plain as day. ‘Is there something else on your mind?’
I gazed back down the road.
‘What is it?’
I was about to say nothing; old habits die hard. But I stopped myself, knowing she deserved better. ‘Tanner.’
She circled around in front of me now, looking me full in the face.
‘We ran from him in Los Angeles and he never forgot it. Then he catches up with us this morning, says he wants Nancy, then gives us a window to ditch out on him again.’
Her eyes flicked between mine.
‘If he meant to have a man guard our room, why didn’t he bring one with him?’ I said.
She took my sleeve. ‘What’re you suggesting?’
‘He’s shown up at the drop of a hat time and again, but today needs an hour’s notice to summon one of his men. In a town as small as Las Vegas.’
She looked away over her shoulder. A pool of light came from the motel’s office, the road melting into the black shortly beyond it. The feeling of eyes lurking just out of sight.
‘Are you saying he knew we’d run?’
*
The cold snap broke the next morning and although the air was still crisp, there was real warmth in the sun.
None of us had slept much. We gathered our few things and loaded them into the car in near silence. I offered to fetch some breakfast, but neither Lizzie nor Nancy showed any enthusiasm for food.
Before she would get in the car, Nancy asked where we were headed.
‘We have to keep moving,’ I said.
‘That doesn’t answer the question. I wasn’t fooling when I said I’d wait here for him.’
I laid my hands on the hood. ‘Clark County Sheriff’s won’t just forget about us. They can get here just as fast as we did.’
‘Women come here all the time on their own. I can blend in.’
‘The Reno Cure’ – loose divorce rules that drew runaway wives from all over the country. ‘You have no money.’
‘I can earn.’
‘You’d sooner that than go home to your family?’
She looked away.
‘What caused you to leave, Nancy?’
She didn’t respond.
Lizzie had already sat herself in the car but now she stepped out again. ‘Whatever it was, there’s nothing can’t be patched up.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘I know your mother would give anything to see you,’ I said. ‘She’s been a wreck while you were missing.’
She looked over as if deciding whether to believe me.
‘I haven’t told her a word about what happened to you,’ I said. ‘As far as she knows, you were in Los Angeles. There’s no shame in what you’ve been through, but it’s nobody’s business but yours to say anything more.’
The silence stretched. I could hear a car passing along the highway in the distance, the flow of the Truckee a murmur underneath it.
I was about to try again when she opened the door and slipped into the backseat.
*
It took three days to reach Iowa. Nancy hailed from a company town name of Enterprise, some twenty miles north of Des Moines in the centre of the state. The route from Reno took us across northern Utah, into southern Wyoming and through Nebraska, the terrain shifting colour as we passed from the red-brown of the desert to the blistering white of the snow-covered prairie. The only constant was the sky above, blue and cloudless most all the time, and seemingly limitless.
We drove from sunup to dusk every day, staying at whatever motel was closest when I reached the limit of my endurance. I watched the road behind compulsively, but saw nothing to suggest we’d attracted a tail. We were the only car in sight for hours at a time, and after enough stretches on those straight, empty roads, it became easier to believe what my eyes were telling me – that we were an anonymous speck, crossing the continent unnoticed.
We passed long periods without speaking, but the silence was never easy. I sensed Nancy struggling to come to terms with what’d happened, the beginnings of a reckoning that would last long beyond our journey. I wanted to say something to offer her solace, but I didn’t know where to begin. On occasion I’d return from the restroom to find Lizzie in quiet conversation with her, and I was hopeful my wife would be able to impart something that would help. With the resilience she’d shown in the face of everything she’d endured, there was no better person to try.
Nancy gave up intermittent snatches of what had gone on. At different times, she told of how Siegel would visit with her at the ranch to shower her with gifts and promises; of his talk of bringing her back to Los Angeles and making her a movie star; of taking her to Europe with him to see Paris and Rome and London; of living in mansions and riding in limousines. All of it there to be had, if she could just wait a little longer while he finished his business in Las Vegas. It didn’t need to be said what he’d expected of her in return, and it seemed she’d never questioned it in the depths of proceedings. His horseshit sounded so fantastical as she recounted it that there were moments she seemed incredulous at her own words; it was those moments gave me hope she’d see it all clearly one day. The one thing I wanted her to understand was the illusion she’d been free to leave; if she could see that, she could scotch the notion that she was somehow to blame.
For my part, when the silence returned it allowed Siegel and Rosenberg to fill my thoughts. And Colt Tanner. At a gas station near Cheyenne, I slipped away to the telephone kiosk to call his office in Los Angeles. I hadn’t arrived at what I would say to him, but it didn’t matter; I dialled twice, but no one answered.
In Nebraska, on the last day before we reached Iowa, we passed a sign for the town of Broken Bow and the name jarred. The significance came to me a short way down the road – the same name as the town in Oklahoma where I’d ditched Sheriff Bailey’s car the morning I fled Texarkana. I remembered how I felt that day, thinking if I could stay ahead of the law long enough to reach Los Angeles, I’d be safe. Never imagining that almost a year later, even that refuge would be lost. That I’d still be running, no end in sight.
*
Nancy Hill lived in a tall, grey clapboard house that sat on a wide clearing of grass on the edge of a bare cornfield. A stand of birch trees separated the two, the only things taller than a barn for miles around. The land was flat to the horizon in every direction.
A short dirt track ran from the highway to the side of the house, barely visible under the snow. I turned onto it and stopped the car, glancing back at Nancy. She was fiddling with the collar of her blouse, refusing to look at me or at the property. A dog started barking inside the house.
A minute after we arrived, a woman opened the front door and stepped out onto the small porch, not much wider than the doorway. The resemblance was unmistakable. She was wrapped in a large shawl, the hem of a grey skirt hanging to her ankles. She squinted, looking in our direction, shielding her eyes from the dazzling reflection coming off the snow. She came forward, standing on the top step of three that led off the deck.
I got out of the car and went to open Nancy’s door, but she’d climbed out by the time I reached her. Her footfalls were muffled in the snow. A weathervane on the roof turned in the breeze, squeaking as it made each lazy rotation.
Mrs Hill took her hand away, her face falling at seeing Nancy standing there. She glanced at me, her eyes moist, and then back at her daughter. She gathered her skirt up and took the last two steps down, then ran across the snow.
Nancy hadn’t moved. Mrs Hill rushed to her daughter and threw her arms around her. She gripped her close, burying her face in her hair. One of them whispered, ‘I’m sorry’; I wasn’t sure which. All of it was conducted in a silence soft enough to hear the branches swaying behind the house.