"Ingrid?" I cross to the passenger side window, and crouch to look in. She's still looking straight ahead. The black veil divides her face into diamonds, all but her mouth. When I see her mouth, there's just no question. I lean closer. The window is half-open, and I catch the scent of lilacs.
"Baby, it's me." I pull on the door handle.
Clunk. Locked.
"She doesn't want to talk to you, Frank."
I turn. Lancy's standing in the headlights, tapping the ash of his Camel. "What are you talking about?" I say. "She came all this way." I turn back to the car. "You came all this way."
She turns so that her chin is almost pointing at me. Almost. Her hand reaches for the door and for one moment my chest gets tight with hope. Then the window rolls up, cutting me off from the scent of lilacs.
"Come on, Frank." Lancy puts a hand on my elbow.
I shake him off.
"Ingrid." My palms are flat on the glass, but she's turned back, her eyes looking to where the headlights vanish into the fog. Then she begins to vanish too. She lifts a Chesterfield to her mouth with a shaking hand. Her lipstick is black in the green dash-light. She drags, exhales, and the haze in the car deepens.
"Frank, don't make it any worse than it is. Let's go."
"Not until she looks at me."
"Christ, Frank, I can hardly look at you. Have you seen yourself lately?"
And suddenly I do. Suddenly I'm not looking at Ingrid but at the glass between us, and I see what she sees. It isn't pretty. There are three long furrows in my cheek where the girl clawed me. Half my face is slick with blood. It's dripping off my chin.
"Mr. Lancy sir, there's lights up on the hill."
"All right, that does it. Frank, you ride with Morris and Hinks."
"No." I shove Lancy away. "No." I look around. My chest hurts. I say, "I'm not going anywhere with those two Bible salesmen."
There's a pause. I hear voices in the fog, far away but getting closer. We all stand there for a minute, listening. "Fine," Lancy says, turning away. "You'll ride with me, but not in the Merc. Morris, we're switching."
"Fine by me," the big one says, and makes sure he says it in my direction. I watch him walk over to the black car, I see her long white arm stretch to the driver's door and do for him what she wouldn't do for me.
Clunk.
And he's in.
It's too much. I turn away, follow Lancy to the agency car. Ahead of us, there's lights moving through the woods, past the watertower, toward the clearing. Lancy gets in and revs the engine. I slide into shotgun and slam the door shut. Clouds have finally smothered the rain-moon high above us, but before they do I spy the old familiar Ashe Agency logo on the car window, the flame-within-a-flame.
And beneath it, the words Lux et Calor.
"Can you try not bleeding on the seat? Thanks." Lancy pulls a rag from somewhere and tosses it my way. He looks over at me but I'm watching the two taillights ahead of us, weaving down the mountain. He clears his throat, spits out the window. Something dead appears in the road. He swerves smoothly around it.
"You shouldn't give those fellows such a hard time, Frank. Morris came to us after a stint in Sing-Sing, eight years for touch bargained down to three. He's a good man for spotting yeggs and boosters, plus he boxes like a kangaroo. And Hinks may look pennyweight but he's an ace shadow. Same with Morris, for all his size. In fact, Morris reminds me some of you, back in the day. Give them a chance. You three are going to be tight as twins this week. Tomorrow morning you all catch a train for Texas."
Something else dead in the road. Lancy doesn't bother to swerve this time and there's the double thump as we pass over it. A rank smell fills the car.
"Christ," Lancy says, rolling up his window. "Skunk." He looks for it in the rear-view. "I said I'm sending you to Texas, Frank. Don't you want to know why?"
"What I want to know," I say, "is who owns that goddamn Mercury. I want to know if it's who I think it is."
"Jesus, but I can still smell that thing. Would you please roll up your window, Frank?"
"We're past it," I say. "What good's it going to do now?" But I roll the window up all the same. "The Merc," I say. "Tell me it isn't Kepler's."
For a minute there's no sound but the jounce of wheels on the dirt road. Lancy sighs through his nose, a whistling sound. "I don't know why you have to assume."
"Why? Because she's smoking goddamn Chesterfields is why. Because she's got a rock around her neck as big as my fist."
He looks away, shrugs. "I'm not a part of this, Frank. Kepler tells me what to do, I tell you. It's been a long time, and we're glad to have you back. The rest, Ingrid and all the rest, well, like you said about the skunk, that's all past. What's the good in going into it now?"
"That's cute," I say.
He gives me a look. "Don't play the hard case with me, Frank. I'm not the one who botched this thing. Your first job."
"My first job is right, and I only agreed to do it because you said she—"
"Stop yelling, Frank. That wasn't my decision. She said she wanted to talk to you is all. She's the real reason you're all heading down to El Paso."
"What?"
"Lionel." He looks at me. "Her son Lionel."
"I know who Lionel is."
"Well, he's in El Paso, on Agency business. Or he was. We lost contact with him three weeks ago. That's where you guys come in."
I'm staring at him. "Lionel?"
"Lionel."
"Since when has he had anything to do with the Agency?"
Lancy keeps two hands on the wheel. His eyes follow the car in front of us. When the Merc's brakelights flash, his cheeks blush a deep red.
"He's been good to her," Lancy says finally. "After you left, he took care of her. Made sure she was provided for. Her and Lionel."
"I see." I swallow that. I look at the logo on the window, the flame-within-a-flame. Beneath it, Lux et Calor. Light and Heat. "And how is Mrs. Kepler doing these days?"
Lancy chews his mustache. "Diane is well."
"Glad to hear it," I say. "Glad to hear it."
# # # # # #
The rest of the drive is silent. Around midnight we pull into Bridgewater, and when the Merc turns off a side street, Lancy doesn't follow. I don't ask why, and I don't have to.
"We're staying here, at the Lakota," he says.
We pull into the drive. It's a big place with a copper roof. "Well that sounds fine," I say.
He looks at me resentfully. "Costs a lot to put us up here," he says. "They thought you'd need a little something after the job."
"They were right about that."
An Indian kid in a top hat and glasses comes out and reaches for the door. Lancy waves him off. "Here," he says, tossing him the keys, "our bags are in the trunk."
While the kid unloads, Lancy and I go inside. The lobby is gloomy with rugs that look Persian and plants that look dead. Along one wall there's a stone fireplace, and standing next to it, a stuffed bear snarls at nothing in particular. The air is thick with smoke. The place smells like a tannery and Lancy says so.
"That would be Tommy's fault, I'm afraid."
Through the haze of woodsmoke I see a man behind the check-in desk. He's a hatchet-faced runt with bifocals and slicked-back hair. "Tommy," he says again. "He's getting your bags now, I believe. Full blooded Mandan, you know. Heard of them? The first settlers in this area thought the Mandans were the lost tribe of Israel, because their skin was lighter than the Lakotas, isn't that something? Only it isn't really lighter, their skin. Nor are they particularly clever. Sloping brows, et cetera. Tommy's no exception. This afternoon I told him to light a fire and so he did, only I neglected to tell him to open the flue, so he didn't. Simple, the lot of them, but brave enough. Tommy's own father shot that grizzly standing by the fireplace, isn't that something? Confidentially, I stuffed him myself."