“What happened to them?”
“I told you,” she said, sharply. “They were kil- Oh, you mean, what happened to the college boys? Nothing. They didn’t even get hurt. The driver walked away. I mean, he walked right out of his car. His big, huge new car. It crushed my dad’s little Ford like it was made of paper.”
“Did he go to jail? The driver, I mean.”
“Jail?” she said, bitterly. “I told you, they were rich boys. Maybe they got a ticket or something, I never knew. When the Taylors got home, we waited for my folks to come by and pick me up. But they never came. It got real late. There was a knock on the door, finally. It was the police.”
“Christ.”
“You know what? I didn’t believe them. No matter how many times they said it, I wouldn’t listen. They took me to the hospital. They had my… they had my mom and my dad there. When I saw them, all… I don’t remember what happened after that.”
“Did people take you in?”
“Nobody took me in,” Tussy said, fiercely. “I quit school. I got a job. The same job I have right now today. And I never missed one single payment on our house.”
“Didn’t anyone… make trouble or anything, you being all by yourself?”
“Well, they sure tried,” Tussy said, leaning back and supporting herself with one palm against the hood. “The Welfare people said I had to go to a foster home. Even the school, they said I was too young to drop out. I could get working papers, for part-time, but I couldn’t leave school entirely, is what they said. And the bank said I couldn’t take over the mortgage, because I wasn’t of age.”
“But…?”
“But Mr. Beaumont-he’s the biggest man in Locke City-he saved me. With everybody acting like I was a baby, I was so scared. I thought I would lose… every last trace of my mom and dad. But this one policeman, he told me, ‘Miss, you go and see Mr. Beaumont. He can fix things.’ And that’s just what I did,” she said, reflectively. “I knew the proper thing would be to write him a letter, but I couldn’t wait. I was too terrified. I couldn’t just sit in my house and have them come for me. So I started walking.”
“You walked to-? I mean, was it far?” Dett hurriedly amended.
“It was real far. The policeman, the nice one, he told me where it was, but I had never been way out in the country. I mean, we went out there, for picnics and stuff, but not to where Mr. Beaumont lives. That’s a different kind of country, you know?”
“Sure. Rich country.”
“Yes! First, I hitched. I knew that was stupid. If my dad had ever caught me pulling a stunt like that, he would have…”
Tussy tossed away her cigarette, put her face in her hands, and started to sob. Dett held her against him, protectively, not moving his hands, his face as flat and blank as a slab of stone. He felt his own heart-a fist-tight knot in his chest, pulsing hate.
1959 October 05 Monday 23:01
“What do you make of it, Sally?”
“It’s a list of some kind, G. Maybe the letters are the jobs he’s been hired to do, and the numbers are the payoff?”
“Could be, I guess. But what’s with the buildings? I mean, banks, I could see. Even the post office, there’s money there, if you know where to look. But the police station? That don’t make any sense.”
“I know. But let’s say those letters, they stand for people, okay?”
“Okay,” the scar-faced man said, noncommittal.
“One of them, the letter is ‘D.’ What’s that tell you?”
“The truth, Sal? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Those numbers, they’re not right. See where the ‘D’ is on the list? Second, not the top. And the number next to it, that’s half of the number across from the ‘X.’ Even if it was a hit list, nobody gets fifty grand. Nobody. Even the guys who did the job on Albert, they got ten apiece. And those guys, they were famiglia, not some outside contract men. If you’re the ‘D’ on that list for twenty-five K, then who’s ‘X,’ for fifty?”
“I’m not saying that’s what it is, G. But I know this: it means something. This guy, Dett, it’s more like he’s a fucking Russian spy than a hit man.”
“In Locke City?”
“You making a joke, G.?”
“No, Sal.”
“No? Good. Because I got news for Mr. Walker Dett. Sal Dioguardi’s not some fucking cafone; he’s a man with a mind. See this number, here?”
“Yeah.”
“Mean anything to you?”
“Not to me.”
“It’s a phone number, G. You know how I know?”
“How?”
“The last three numbers, that was the tip-off.”
“Two-one-three?”
“Yeah. Look, I cover those numbers with my finger-see?-what do you have left?”
“Sally, I swear I’m not-?”
“You got seven numbers,” Dioguardi said, excitedly. “That’s a telephone number, G. Now, if you want to call long distance, you need an area code, right?”
“Right.”
“Which is how many numbers?”
“Three. Huh! So you think the whole thing, it’s a phone number?”
“Those last three numbers? Two-one-three? That’s the area code for L.A., Gino.”
“And this guy, we know he didn’t have a car when he came in; he had to rent one here,” the scar-faced man said. “It all adds up, Sal.”
“Yeah,” said Dioguardi, thoughtfully. “We talked about you going out to L.A. anyway. For that other business. Okay, this moves things up a bit: I want you on the next plane out, G. Tomorrow, okay?”
1959 October 05 Monday 23:06
“I didn’t mean to just… let go like that,” Tussy said, her voice muffled in Dett’s chest.
“It’s okay,” Dett said. Knowing it was, trusting the knowledge.
“You really want to hear all this?”
“More than anything.”
Tussy pulled back slightly. She examined Dett’s face in the moonlight for a long minute, making no secret of what she was doing. Finally, she nodded to herself, swallowed, and went on with her story: “I got three rides, one after the other. By then, it was already afternoon. I knew I wasn’t going to get anyone to pick me up on the side roads-I didn’t even see anyone for a long time-so I walked. It was almost dark by the time I got there.
“Mr. Beaumont’s house, it’s like a castle. All stone. I never saw anything like it before, even in a book. There’s a gatehouse at the entrance to the property. Not a fence, a little house, like, where you have to stop before you can go in.
“The man there, the guard, I guess he was, he was very nice, but I told him I would only talk to Mr. Beaumont. Like I was insisting on it, isn’t that ridiculous? But, finally, he told me to move away. Not get off the property, just step back. Then he picked up a phone thing and he talked into it. After he hung up, he told me someone would be out to get me.
“I just stood there. A man came up. He was one of those… slow ones. I don’t like the names people call them, but I don’t know the polite thing to say. He just said to come with him, and I did.
“Inside the building, it was just like the outside. I mean, like a palace or something. I don’t even have the words to tell you how… stupendous it was. The foyer, where I waited, it was bigger than my whole house.
“The man who brought me, he said to just sit down-there was a hundred places you could do that-and somebody would come and get me.
“I guess I expected it would be Mr. Beaumont himself, I don’t know why. But it was a lady. She told me her name was Cynthia Beaumont, and she was Mr. Beaumont’s sister. I went with her into this place like an office, and she sat behind a desk and told me to tell her everything I came to tell Mr. Beaumont.
“That’s what I did. She had a hard face, Miss Beaumont did. Not a mean one, but hard. Like policemen have. I never saw her smile, not once, all the time I was talking. But I guess I didn’t tell her anything to be smiling about. I was crying. A lot.