It was too hot in the desert to drag matters out. But it needed to be done.
Lizzie was holding the flowers, a small bunch we’d picked up coming through town. The creased photograph of Julie Desjardins and Nancy Hill that had been with me from the start was in my hands.
We made the same short walk from the highway that we’d taken before, to the patch of stony ground where Julie Desjardins’ body had been discovered. There was nothing to mark the spot, no way to even know exactly where it was. The county coroner may have arranged to have her buried somewhere, if they hadn’t cremated her, but I didn’t want to leave my remembrance on an anonymous grave. Somehow this seemed closer to her memory.
We came to a stop. Lizzie crouched to set the flowers down.
I placed the photograph on the ground next to them and put a rock on top to keep it from blowing away. Never knowing who she really was. A family shorn of a daughter, left to always wonder. The kind of hell my wife spoke of.
I stayed crouched. ‘I’m sorry.’
Lizzie put her hand on my shoulder.
After a moment I stood up again, seeing the Flamingo in the distance. A cruel monument to her passing. The parking lot was full.
I looked away, a brilliant blue sky stretching forever above us, thinking about all the secrets I was keeping and the men I protected with my silence. All the dead looking to me for retribution, for my failures and otherwise. A debt that could never be paid – but I’d go to my grave trying.
I took Lizzie’s hand and started retracing our steps. Los Angeles was still hours away.
Another car pulled in behind ours, a rising cloud of dust in its wake. A grey Dodge—
‘Charlie …’
I moved in front of her and stopped.
The driver’s door opened and Colt Tanner got out. He laid his arm on the roof, squinting at us.
I glanced at the Flamingo, weighing if she could make a break for it.
Tanner started towards us, something in his right hand. Not a gun.
I reached for the snub nose in my pocket, keeping it just out of sight.
When he was ten yards away, he called out. ‘I’m not armed, Charlie, and you’re not about to draw on a Federal agent. Let’s start there.’
He kept coming, and I saw it was an envelope he was holding.
I studied him, feeling my neck flush as he closed. ‘Is that what you are?’
‘Don’t come at me like you have a grievance.’
I pointed my finger in his face. ‘You were in league with them the whole time. You gave us up to them when we were at the Breakers Motel. You gave them Trent Bayless. You gave them Henry Booker—’
‘Christ, you want to hang the Lindbergh Baby on me as well? Listen to yourself.’
I swiped my hand away. ‘I saw through you, too. Soon as I saw that photo of us at the Breakers, I knew you were rotten and I talked myself out of it—’
‘When I showed up to bust your ass out of jail? Or when I showed up to save your ass at the ranch?’
‘Go to hell. You came to that ranch for Rosenberg, he called you there – that’s the only way to make sense of it. That was how you cemented your pact. You’re a mobster with a badge—’
‘You’re not possessed of all the facts, Charlie, and you’re fitting them to a narrative that doesn’t work. Henry Booker was a degenerate with statutory rape jackets going back years. Bayless was a queer, you knew that. However they came to meet their ends, if you asked me to trade their lives for Ben Siegel and Moe Rosenberg? I’d do it and sleep like a baby.’
I was gritting my teeth hard enough to crack. ‘Don’t pretend this was all some grand plan. Don’t insult—’
‘It’s a war, Charlie. You take casualties.’
‘Like Julie Desjardins?’
He’d started to say something but stopped with his mouth ajar.
‘She’d be alive but for you,’ I said.
He closed his eyes and took a breath. ‘That was unfortunate.’
I waited, stole a glance at Lizzie, standing beside me now.
When he kept his silence, I said, ‘That’s all you’ve got to say? You must’ve known where they were all along.’
‘My operation was barely aware of that aspect of Siegel’s dealings. It wasn’t a high priority, I had no idea lives were at risk. And you’re wrong, I didn’t know where they were keeping them.’
‘You lying son of a bitch.’
He waved his hand as if he was swatting away a fly. ‘Siegel and Rosenberg are dead. I thought I’d find you in better spirits.’
‘You were expecting gratitude?’
‘No, but I didn’t expect to find you mourning them either. I think you’re coming to realise something about yourself, Charlie.’ He looked out across the desert.
‘I didn’t call you to have my head shrunk.’
He turned to me again. ‘They both of them deserved to die, and you can’t be at peace with it because now you’re empty. You live for the chase, Charlie: you could’ve bargained for my help in finding those girls when we first talked in LA. You chose not to, so don’t delude yourself you gave a damn about them. I bet you’d have preferred to never find them so you’d always have your doomed search – someplace to put all that guilt you carry. The same with Siegel and Rosenberg.’
I shook my head, trying not to show hesitation. ‘Must’ve stung to have to off your business partner that way.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Now we get to it. That’s why you called me, isn’t it? You wanted to know if my feelings are hurt.’
‘That’s not how I’d put it—’
‘But it’s right.’ A thin smile crossed his face, looking as if it was something he was trying for the first time. ‘You didn’t sing to any of the bosses in New York—’
‘You don’t—’
‘You didn’t, I’d know. That’s good. Smart move going there – make sure you had my attention.’
I looked him dead in the eye. ‘I’ve lived under the sword long enough. If you’re coming for me, now’s your chance. Otherwise you walk away and leave me and my wife the hell alone.’
The smile disappeared and he held my stare. ‘Tell me one thing: how did you figure out about the bugs?’
I wondered if that was all he really wanted to know. The truth was, his mistaken belief that I’d killed Winfield Callaway was what sparked the notion; a rumour that’d spread through the criminal fraternity that he’d picked up on – but how? Seemed unlikely someone would tell him direct, so it had to be he was overhearing their chatter. Once I’d tested the thought, it made sense of his ability to show up out of the blue. Lizzie’s suspicion that he was already in Las Vegas when she called him to bust me out of jail was almost certainly right; my guess was the foreman at the Flamingo made a call on one of the house lines to warn someone in Siegel’s outfit I’d shown up at the site – and Tanner was listening.
I stayed silent while I thought about all this, and wondered if he’d try to force it out of me.
Instead, he patted me on the shoulder. ‘No matter. You played a bum hand well. The way you compromised Rosenberg was ingenious, and it got you what you wanted.’
‘What did he buy you off with, Tanner?’
‘Buy me? Not even close.’
‘You manoeuvred him into Siegel’s seat.’
He took a deep breath and sighed. ‘Let me ask you this: you know how you win a fight against two grizzlies?’
I stared at him, silent again.
‘You don’t,’ he said. ‘You make them fight each other and you pick off the survivor.’
I threw my hand up. ‘I can’t listen to this horseshit—’
‘It worked, didn’t it? You played your part, be proud.’
‘Why?’ I grabbed his lapel. ‘Why me?’
‘You got yourself into this, I just—’
‘No, don’t lie to my goddamn face. You were the only one knew I was looking for those girls, you set me up for Siegel to find.’
He looked down, feigning chagrin. ‘You were the perfect vessel to stir the pot. Siegel wanted you dead so bad but Moe kept counselling against it, knowing what a pain in the ass you’d be if he could keep running you into him. He just didn’t figure on you outmanoeuvring him as well. Like I said, I’m impressed – and that’s why you have nothing to fear from me. I knew you’d be useful all the way back in Texarkana.’
‘I don’t want a goddamn thing to do with you.’
He tapped the envelope against the flat of his hand. ‘That’s not how these things work, Charlie. You’re in the life, now, it’s where you belong.’ He passed it to me. ‘Go back to Los Angeles. Cool your head in the ocean, we’ll talk when the time’s right. My only condition is you don’t disclose my methods to anyone else. That would necessitate a swift end to our agreement.’ He pointed to the envelope by way of an explanation and walked away whistling ‘Yankee Doodle’.
I waited till he was in his car and then tore it open. Inside was a single photograph.
It showed two women talking on the small porch of a snow-covered house in Iowa, Lizzie and I just visible on the edge of the shot.