When I stepped off the bus and saw Lizzie, it felt like I shed a second skin – one of fear and violence and darkness. Part of me couldn’t believe I was the same man had left in the first place.
She looked drawn and I could tell she’d been skipping meals. It brought home to me the ordeal she’d been through, and a fresh wave of anger came over me – and guilt. She threw her arms around me and buried her face in my neck, and I begged the fates not to take me away from her again.
*
I finally stayed true to the promise I’d made to myself and, over the course of several days, told her everything. She’d figured out the fire at her old house in Texarkana was no accident; when I explained to her what led to it, and the measures I’d put in place to protect us, she seemed reassured. If her dispassion about losing the Texarkana house was a front, it never cracked.
It got tough when I told her about Layfield. There was little comfort for her in learning the identity of her sister’s killer; she’d moved from mourning to remembrance, and giving a face and a name to the shadow she’d banished only brought it all back again. I told her I’d had the chance to kill him and that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. And that he’d saved my life.
Telling her that last part was the hardest. I was scared she’d be repulsed by the thought of me being in his debt. As it was, she cut me off mid-sentence. ‘You came home. That’s the only thing that matters to me.’
*
I called Sam Masters the day after I got back. He skipped a greeting and got right into it.
‘Teddy Coughlin dropped out of the mayoral race yesterday. Can you believe it?’
‘No kidding.’
‘At the eleventh goddamn hour, the son of a bitch drops out. Gave a magnanimous speech about how his injuries were more serious than first thought and he didn’t feel he could govern to the fullest extent of his capacity.’ He was jubilant, but the frustration in his voice was evident.
‘Your man will walk it now. Can’t you be happy at that?’
‘We could have beaten him. Twenty years and we finally had him beat. He robbed us of that.’
‘You’ll get over it.’
‘Maybe. I’m not letting it lie, though. I’m bringing a charge against him for misuse of public funds. If not, I’ll try a charge of bribing public officials or voter fraud. I’ll get him one way or another.’
I smiled at the thought – Coughlin finally brought low for something so prosaic.
‘Harlan Layfield is to be posthumously charged with the murders of Jeannie Runnels, Elizabeth Prescott and the Tucker brothers, as well as Jimmy Robinson. I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Appreciate you telling me. What about Geneve Kolkhorst?’
There was a pause. ‘I don’t have the evidence for that. I’ll see to it her file remains open, but the best I can do is have it changed from suicide to unsolved.’
I thought about what it meant for the families that were left behind; closure for Robinson’s sister and Sid Hansen, no such thing for Heinrich Kolkhorst and his wife. I didn’t like the thought of him being left wondering, and I resolved to tell him the truth.
‘How’s your wife faring?’ he said.
‘She’s bearing up. She’s a fighter.’
‘No doubt.’ He was quiet again, and I could tell he was edging towards something. ‘You feel like telling me what really happened at Teddy Coughlin’s house that night?’
‘Take care of yourself, Sam.’
*
We never moved back into the bungalow. The men who’d come for Lizzie had ransacked it again, a ploy to help convince me they’d managed to take her. Twice in a week was too much for anyone to bear; it wasn’t ours any more. We stayed in Acheson’s guesthouse for a night and then we hit the road, taking Route 1 up the coast. I told Lizzie it was a vacation, but I had it in my mind that it was best to blow town a while.
I wrote the articles I’d promised Acheson and called them in as we travelled north. They were more fiction than truth. Not because I made things up, but because of all the parts I left out: a murderous cop killing with impunity in a town bought and paid for by mobsters on the other side of the country. Acheson knew what I was doing and tacitly approved; the reality of the cosy relationship between gangsters and elected officials in Hot Springs had too many parallels to the situation in Los Angeles for comfort. He wanted the story I pitched him – feel-good pieces about a band of GIs who came home from the war and saved their home town in the name of democracy. It didn’t escape me that my reporting was just the same as what had happened after Texarkana, another patchwork of lies told to protect the square Johns from a truth they didn’t want to hear. It shocked me how easily I agreed to play my part.
At every stop, Lizzie and I took long walks on the beach, our way of easing back into the shared life we’d started together. We talked about our future, and it was nice to be troubled only by everyday problems – finding someplace to live when we got back to LA, buying another car. We even edged towards a conversation about starting a family.
But as the days went by, I could sense there was something troubling her. I remembered the way she’d cut me off when I told her about Layfield and I wondered if I’d been right all along – if that truth had festered and now turned septic. One evening, sitting on Pismo Beach, watching the breakers wash up the sand, I asked her about it.
‘It’s not that. I told you, I don’t care about what happened. You did what you had to.’
I held her hand tighter. ‘Tell me.’
She stared at the horizon, where the sun was fading into the water. ‘I can’t keep from thinking about everything. After the burglary, I swore I wouldn’t let them chase me from my home – not again. But they did, and next thing I knew I was on my own in a dirty motel room not knowing if you were dead or alive. We ran all the way to the ocean and couldn’t get free of it. Now we’re running again. What happens when we’ve got nowhere left to run to?’
‘We’re not running. Teddy Coughlin’s a busted flush – he’ll have Masters all over his business for the rest of his life. And besides, we’re protected. It’s over.’
‘Benjamin Siegel’s still out there. Men like him never go away. The ones that can always find some other lowlife to pick up a knife or a gun in their name.’
I turned to look at her and I noticed she’d got some colour back in her skin and she looked healthy again. ‘Siegel won’t care a damn about us now Tindall’s dead. He has no need to come after us. We’re insignificant.’
Empty words. Even as I said it, I was bracing for the comeback I had no answer to: So when can we go home?
She looked at me. Her pupils were shrunken and hard from the light in a way I’d never seen them before. Half her face was in shadow. A reminder that even the brightest sunset was only the herald of night falling.