Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery (30 page)

“We can’t risk it. First of all, I would hazard a guess that highway patrolmen in Nevada and Utah don’t know Toscanini from Elmer Fudd. Second, you know better than anyone how wired Lucky and Meyer are. They might own half the troopers out here; the cops could do their dirty work for them, or maybe just bump me and Kim off, leaving you and the old man to be picked up later.”

“So we’re sitting ducks if we stick with this bus.”

“Totally. At some point we have to ditch it. Hopefully not before Salt Lake, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t make it that far.”

Barbara took my hand. “I don’t scare easily, but I have to tell you—I’m definitely fearful.”

“Good,” I told her. “I was starting to worry about you.”

She put her head on my shoulder and within five minutes, Barbara Stern had shut her eyes and was breathing rhythmically, a young girl’s smile on her face. Some happy and faraway dream. I suddenly felt very much like a stranger, an old stranger at that, so I decided to stop looking.

FOURTEEN

I joined Kim at the
front of the bus. She looked back toward her two passengers: Toscanini had tilted his head back and appeared to be catching a few winks, Barbara had shifted in her seat and now she slept facing the aisle, backlit by the morning sun. Kim watched her recumbent form with almost palpable longing.

“She’s yours?” Kim’s gaze returned to the empty road.

“She’s nobody’s.”

“Figures.”

“Can’t imagine she ever will be, either,” I told her.

“She’s what my father used to call a ‘humdinger.’” Kim brushed a stray hair back behind her ear. “My heart actually goes pitty-pat when I look at her.”

“Yeah,” I said, and slowly dug a cigarette out of my pocket.

“That’s all you have to say on the subject?” Kim asked.

“Her old man was killed. That’s how this whole mess began.”

“Really.”

“Sweet little guy. A fiddler.”

“Which is how Toscanini fits in?”

“Exactly.”

“Amazing. Me driving Toscanini around.” She looked back at the sleeping beauty. “Look at her. The way the light hits her arm, the swell of her ass.”

“I get the point.” I lit up my Lucky.

She smiled. “Maybe you do. Not to tell you more than you want to know, but I’ve been sort of soaked ever since I laid eyes on her.”

“That’s plenty more than I want to know.”

“I’m sure. But God, what a work of art she is.” She looked at the dashboard. “I should distract myself. Think anybody’d wake up if I switched on the radio?”

“Not if you keep it low enough.”

She turned the radio knob and we began to hear an oleaginous male voice crooning a tender ballad about the Lord Jesus Christ. Kim changed stations and we were treated to a feed report from Lubbock, Texas. Corn was evidently in for a very rough day.

“No real choice so far, is it?” Kim muttered, and turned the dial farther to the right. Now some old cowpoke was singing softly about corrals and doggies.

“Can you stand this, Jack, or should I keep looking?” Kim asked.

“I can stand plenty. It’s fine.” I stood and watched the desert fly past, my feet planted firmly on the floor, one hand on a chrome bar mounted to the rear of the driver’s seat. The sky was a deep blue I had only seen in Westerns.

“This is a dazzling part of the world,” I said, inhaling my Lucky. “But it doesn’t seem real to me.”

“You get used to it.”

“To the unreality?”

“Yep,” Kim said. “It just sort of seeps into your consciousness and then it becomes normal.”

“Gives me the willies. I feel like I’m traveling across the moon. We’ve seen, what, four cars in an hour?”

“It’s early yet.” Kim smiled. “We might see five or six more.”

“There’s just nothing here. Red rocks, some bluffs, a few evil-looking birds.”

“That’s why Vegas is going to keep growing. Fills a vacuum out in these parts. Once the big shots figured out how to air-condition large spaces, Vegas was inevitable.” She fell silent, considering something. “Toscanini himself,” she finally said. “Goddamn.”

“Can you see him leading an orchestra in Vegas?”

Kim looked at me with some amusement. “For real?”

“That was the general idea.”

“Can I ask you something that you don’t have to answer?”

I pulled a bit of tobacco from my lip. “Go ahead.”

“Someone swore to me they saw Lucky Luciano walking through the casino at the Inn. Is that possible? Wasn’t he deported, like forever?”

I nodded. “It’s more than possible.”

“Holy shit,” she said. “Is that in any way related to this old guy leading an orchestra on the strip?”

“You’re two for two.” I cocked my ear. There was an increasingly loud engine noise of unknown origins. I listened and it only got louder. “Is that coming from this bus?” I asked Kim.

She listened. The noise deepened and widened. It had a different dynamic than the bus or the odd passing car or truck.

In point of fact, it was at a different altitude.

Kim stared into her side mirror. “Jesus …” I leaned over her shoulder and saw what she did: a single-engine plane about two hundred yards behind us traveling maybe four hundred feet off the ground.

“What the fuck is this, Jack, pardon my Italian?”

“Get off the road.”

“What?”

“Get off the road. Now.”

The plane was, not surprisingly, gaining on us.

“Get off where?” Kim asked.

“Right up there.”

We were passing a bluff; a dirt road marked
MOAPA TRAIL
loomed a hundred yards ahead.

“There?” she shouted. The plane was really loud now. “The dirt road?”

“Yeah.” Our airborne stalkers were closing the gap with comical ease. The dirt trail was ten yards away. Out the window I saw a small metallic object land on the road beside us and roll to a stop.

“Now! Now!” I bellowed at Kim. She yanked the wheel hard to the left and we went barreling off the road and onto the dirt path. Two seconds later, there was a deafening explosion.

“Holy Christ,” I said to Kim.

“What was that?” She’d gone white under the gills.

“A hand grenade.”

“You shitting me?

“No ma’am.”

Barbara woke up. “What’s happening?” she mumbled.

“A small detour, ladies and gentlemen,” I told her.

We were raising a thundercloud of dust as we sped down the dirt trail. The single-engine prop had gone past us on the highway and was now skimming the air virtually on its side, beginning a slow turn to double back in our direction.

“Stay close to the bluff,” I hollered at Kim.

“A grenade,” Kim said. “Holy motherfucker …”

I looked into the side mirror. The plane was taking another pass. We accelerated, spraying dirt and pebbles across a sign pointing to the Moapa Reservation Market.

Barbara got up from her seat. “Jack …”

“Sit back down, sweetheart,” I told her. “Please.”

“This is
outrageous,
” she said, sitting down obediently.

“Now what?” Kim asked. The plane was getting lower and closer and
much
louder.

“Turn here,” I hollered. There was a hand-painted, arrow-shaped sign by the side of the road that pointed to a tiny dirt trail that led back to Highway 91.

“This?” Kim shouted back.

“Yeah.”

“You want to go back to the highway?”

“Yes!”

Barbara got out of her seat. “Jack, what the hell—”

“Sit down!” I bellowed.

We approached the dirt trail and Kim just shook her head.

“It’s a little trail, Jack! Barely big enough for a car, much less this monster.”

“Do it.”

Kim turned the wheel hard to the left. The bus wobbled for an instant and Toscanini raised his head, clearly disoriented.

“Que cosa
?” he asked foggily.

“We had a slight change of route,” I told him. The plane was fifty yards behind and completing its turn, when its engine emitted a whining, scraping noise that even I could immediately tell wasn’t kosher. I stared into the side mirror like a mad scientist as we went under an overpass carved from the bluff; the plane was now attempting to climb again when its engine stalled.

“What’s happening?” Kim asked.

“You’re doing great,” I shouted. “Keep going.”

Toscanini was now fully awake. “This is like war,” he said almost gleefully. He started to pull his window open.

“Maestro, keep it closed!” I hollered.

The pursuing plane had restarted its engine; the familiar drone had resumed. The small craft began to climb, but then the engine began to sputter once again, before finally falling silent.

“Now what?” Kim asked.

“I think they’re in major trouble,” I told her.

They were in worse than major trouble. The plane veered to the left and started sinking. Barbara opened her window and stuck her head out.

“Put your head in!” I yelled, but she waved at me to pipe down. Now Toscanini followed suit, rising from his seat and pulling his window all the way open. Kim accelerated, but the two of them didn’t budge, gawking like a pair of yokels taking the
Maid of the Mist
under Niagara Falls.

The small plane made another pass at restarting its motor, but to no avail. It fluttered left and right and then started to sail toward the bluff with the doomed inevitability of a kamikaze.

Kim watched it develop in her mirror. “Oh my God,” she said, more to herself than to me.

I threw open a window and watched the catastrophe unfold. The single-engine craft sailed like a runaway skier into the side of the bluff and instantaneously exploded.

“Mamma mia,
” exclaimed the Maestro.

It was as if Zeus himself had hurled the plane into the bluff. Bits of wing and engine and fuselage went flying everywhere. I thought I saw a pair of legs soar up and back, but that might have been my childlike imagination taking flight. Whatever the particulars, it was more than evident that our pursuers had been turned into so much cream of wheat.

Kim guided us back onto the highway. Despite the polar air-conditioning in the bus, her face was bathed in sweat.

“Yikes,” she said.

“You were unbelievable,” I told her.

“Thank you. I couldn’t agree more.” She wiped her forehead with her slender but well-muscled arm. “Now what?”

“On to Salt Lake, with
mucho allegro.
”

“Means fast?”

“Means fast.”

“So you don’t think we’re in the clear?”

“Not even close.”

I walked to the back of the bus. Toscanini and Barbara had lowered their windows, but there had been a change in the seating arrangements: Maestro, unsurprisingly, had taken the chair beside hers.

“Que cosa,
Boston Blackie?” he asked me.

“We were pursued by air and it was resoundingly unsuccessful.”

“Who do you think was in the plane?” Barbara asked, and I detected a weird note of concern in her voice.

“You mean was it Meyer?”

She stared at me and I was certain I had struck a nerve. I’m sure she was feeling a lot of things at once—shame, guilt, and leftover affection all vying for first position.

“I’d be very much surprised if he was in that plane. Aerial pursuit in a single-engine tomato can like that falls under the heading of
‘goyische kopf,’
which certainly eliminates Lansky”

Toscanini smiled. “I know this,
‘goyische kopf.’
Horowitz say this sometime.
Molto comico.
But not always true.” Toscanini looked a little nearsightedly into my eyes. “They drop bomb, Boston Blackie?”

“A grenade.”