“Gotta give you credit, Frankie,” Dayball had said. “You got flair when it comes to squirreling loot.”
Frank snapped back to the present as they pulled up to the ranch house. Everyone in the car got out and milled toward the yard. Frank walked unsteadily between Lyle and Roy, trying to work his knees. As he did, he heard the sound of the sixteen-wheeler approaching from the direction of the compound, and shortly it took the final turn beyond the barn and thundered past, heading for the county road and vanishing in a roar of dust. Shortly, the Le Mans carrying Hack and his friends appeared and pulled up beside the Lincoln.
Everybody went inside and found a place to wait. From his seat in the kitchen Frank heard the sound of a third car arrive. Two doors opened and closed and Bud Lally, Felix Randall’s bodyguard, poked his head in, surveyed the room, then held the door open.
Felix Randall entered with a bent, painful weariness, walking with the help of a stick. With a nod of gratitude he accepted the chair offered him by Lonnie Dayball. His face was deeply cragged and he wore a two-day stubble that shone gray on his chin and cheeks. He wore his hair cut short in a military burr. At one time, in his biker heyday, the locks had flowed, but after his stint in Boron he’d decided on a more Spartan deportment.
His hair was not the only thing prison had changed. After they’d discovered the tumor in his throat and transferred him to Springfield, they’d hacked out the better part of his larynx and esophagus to snag the growth, then bombarded him with chemotherapy and radiation. It was only in the past six months he’d managed to eat anything resembling solid food, and he still spoke in a growling whisper.
Even with his haggard face and his weary eyes and his thin, bent body, he commanded the full attention of every man in the room. Sitting with both hands resting atop his walking stick, he gestured with his fingers for Dayball to lean toward him. When Dayball obeyed, Felix whispered to him, “Bring her in now.”
Shel sat waiting in the guest room by the window in the dark, with only the glow from her cigarette lighting her face. She did not turn when the door opened. From behind, someone snapped his fingers.
“Visitor,” Dayball said.
She stubbed out her cigarette and rose. The first two weeks she’d done as she’d been ordered to do, nurse Frank along, keep him functional. Every night, she’d told herself: You kept him alive one more day. It felt, more times than not, like fattening a calf for slaughter.
The past week they’d kept him from her, and given the sudden theatricality she’d sensed in everyone’s mood tonight, she expected to learn that he was dead, or due to die. She had little idea what had happened or even if it had already, but regardless it had taken three weeks to get right. Frank had kept it from her for her own good, which, given the circumstances, seemed a caring gesture.
This last week they’d been plying him with speedballs, a home brew made of crank mellowed with fentanyl. This was meant to flatten out his impulses, self-destructive and otherwise. The few encounters she’d shared with him since had revealed a caricature of the man she’d known. He meandered around in a state of thoughtful obsession, focused on what it was they wanted him to do and nothing else, like it was all he could hold in his mind at one time.
The most haunting thing about it was, he seemed happy. Once, when they’d passed in the hallway, he’d offered her a sunny, mindless smile, and she sensed it was as close to good-bye as they would come with each other.
She entered the kitchen with Dayball behind her. Felix Randall studied her for a moment, then gestured for Buddy, his bodyguard, to lean close. Felix whispered something to him. Buddy stood straight again and said, “Everybody but her and Frank, out to the cars.”
Dayball, Tully, the Akers brothers, and the other men filed out silently. When there was only the four of them- Felix, Buddy, Frank, and Shel- in the room, Felix gestured for her to come closer so he could talk to her directly instead of through Buddy.
He pointed to a chair and Buddy pulled it up for her. She sat down, leaning forward, her arms folded and at rest on her knees. Frank sat in the breakfast nook, staring at her.
“You two married?” Felix asked Shel in his throatish whisper.
The question took her utterly off-guard. “No,” she answered.
“Why not?”
His eyes were deeply set in his face, the result of having lost so much weight. Shel had never seen him well, but she had seen pictures, and he had been tall and fearsome. His eyes retained much of that power.
“It’s never come up,” she said.
“You been together how long?”
“Three years.”
“Three years,” Felix repeated, “and it never came up? What, there somebody else?”
“No,” Shel said instantly. She wondered what they knew about her past, what they knew about Danny.
“I been married twenty-one years,” Felix said matter-of-factly. “I believe in marriage, the right two people. Cheryl, twenty-one years, she’s been solid as a rock. You remind me of her a little.”
“Thank you,” Shel said.
He gestured with his chin across his shoulder toward the breakfast nook. “What do I do with him?”
Shel found herself searching for a reply. She doubted this sat well with a man who believed in marriage. “I was not aware,” she managed finally, “that it was in my hands.”
“I’m asking,” Felix said.
“He’s suffered enough,” Shel said.
“For what?”
Shel closed her eyes. She felt afraid. “For his mistakes.”
“Is that what they were? Mistakes?”
“Yes,” Shel said.
“I’m not so sure,” Felix said. “I mean, I don’t know that I believe in such a thing as a mistake. I think a person’s pointed in one direction from the day he’s born. He may get sidetracked, because life can fuck you good, but basically everybody finds a way back into the saddle. And I gotta ask you, is what’s happened, what he did, a case of life knocking him off his horse, or was he headed that way the whole time?”
“I believe,” Shel said, “people make mistakes.”
Felix looked at the floor, clenched his jaw and shook his head. “I don’t like that answer,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she replied. “I wish I had another one.”
“I believe that.” Felix thought for a moment then turned to his bodyguard. Nodding toward Frank, Felix said, “Take him out to the cars with the others, all right?”
Buddy nodded, moved toward the breakfast nook and inserted his hand in Frank’s armpit. He lifted Frank to his feet and led him toward the door. Frank’s eyes met Shel’s, but the only words he managed before leaving were, “Hasta luego.”
Shel cringed and closed her eyes. Felix shook his head. Once they were alone, Felix said, “So what am I supposed to believe, that he’s gonna go on making mistakes?”
“I think,” Shel said, “he’s learned a lesson.”
“Hasta luego? He’s learned a fucking lesson?”
Shel couldn’t think of what to say. Felix grimaced. “What sort of guarantee I got he doesn’t make a million more mistakes, each one worse than the last?”
“I’m the guarantee,” Shel said. “I’ll watch him.”
Felix shook his head. “That what you are? A baby-sitter? A wife, there’s a bond, there’s an oath. A wife can’t be made to testify. What’s a goddamn baby-sitter?”
“I’ll stay right here,” Shel said. “And I won’t testify.”
“Why?”
Shel looked at her hands. “What’s the alternative?” she asked.
“For who?”
“Frank.”
Felix thought this over for a moment. He said, “You’re being honest.”
“Yes.”
“I appreciate that.”
She looked up. “I’m glad.”
Felix studied her again, a bit longer this time. “I don’t have a problem with you, do I?”