Jodi Compton - Hailey's War

If he was impressed, it didn’t show on his face, but then Lucius Marsellus had probably seen some shooting scars in his day.

I said, “Do you believe me?”

Marsellus was slow to speak. Then he said, “Yeah. Yeah, I do, but I don’t understand what it has to do with Trey, or me.”

I said, “Mr. Marsellus, it’s fallen to me to look out for this child, but I can’t, not in the long run. Skouras’s men know who I am and what I look like. As long as Henry’s with me, he can be found. And my resources are extremely limited. I can’t start life over in Buenos Aires.”

“Miss Cain, are you asking me for money?”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t do that.”

It took him a moment, but then he understood. “You want me to take this child?” he said.

I looked him directly in the eye. “I can never repay what I took from you, however accidentally. But this child is the son of a genius father and a beautiful and virtuous mother. I think he might really be something, with the right resources and the right guidance. If Tony Skouras is allowed to raise him, he’ll make this boy in his image, and Skouras is a monster.”

Marsellus said, “Why take this child away from one gangster just to give him to another?”

“His mother would have done anything to keep him from being raised by Tony Skouras,” I said. “Nidia could have gotten money from him for giving up the rights to her child. She could have been set for life. Instead, she fled to Mexico, to live in poverty in some village in the Sierra Madre. Obviously, Adrian told her very bad things about his father. If you read about this man and pay attention, that’s borne out. A picture emerges of a guy who’s spiritually poisoned, a trafficker in human lives, obsessed with money and with winning at all costs.” I paced. “You, on the other hand, despite what you might do in the name of business, have never been impeached in your personal life. You seem to have a good relationship with your mother, your brother and sisters, your nieces and nephews. And you were said to be a devoted… a good…”

“A good father,” Marsellus said.

I nodded. “And beyond all that, this is a good tactical decision,” I said. “Your home is the last place Skouras would look for his half-white, half-Mexican grandchild.”

“And I’m supposed to make it look legitimate how?”

“You have money and connections,” I said. “You can make it look legitimate. Any good attorney could.”

“You’ve thought about this,” he said.

“Yes.”

“But you’re not scared.”

“What?” It didn’t seem to have anything to do with his line of questioning.

Marsellus steepled his fingers, tapping the tips against one another. He said, “Oh, you’re polite enough, and respectful enough, but… I’ve lived a lot of life, Miss Cain, and I’ve seen a lot of fear in my day. It’s not a feeling I’m getting off you.” He paused. “Why is that?”

Before I could answer, Henry began to fuss, his face crimping and reddening. Marsellus looked down at him.

“He’s probably hungry,” I said. “I can give him a bottle.”

“No,” Marsellus said. “That boy’s got a muddy diaper.” He gave Henry back to me. “There’s a bathroom down the hall where you can see to him. After that, come to the first room off the staircase. We can finish our conversation there.”

The room Marsellus had directed me to clearly reflected a woman’s tastes: pale Victorian striped wallpaper, an antique escritoire, wing chairs. When I got there, after changing Henry’s diaper and washing up in the bathroom, Marsellus was standing by the window.

He said mildly, “You should have come and talked to me a year ago.”

“I know,” I said.

He went on: “Trey was a very active child. Almost hyperactive. Me, he’d mind, but I’d seen him disobey his nanny repeatedly, run away from her when she’d told him to stay close to her side. I’d seen him run out into the street before, though he’d been told repeatedly not to. My wife and I were thinking of getting a man to look after him, someone who could take a firmer hand. But Miss Beauvais was a nice girl, and Trey liked her, so we put off that decision.” He paused, looking out the window. “When Trey died, I was very angry. Some of it was at her, and some at you. But a lot of it was at myself, for not doing something earlier.

“I have, like you said, a certain reputation in business. Some of that is deserved. Some of it is rumor and exaggeration. I don’t always discourage that, since with fear comes respect. But a reputation like mine has unintended consequences. It was the reason Trey’s nanny left town in the middle of the night. I assume she was acting on the same incorrect conclusion you later did, though to be fair to you, her disappearance gave you a little more evidence for it.”

Then he said, “The hardest rumors to combat are the ones that are never printed or even spoken in your presence. I know that some people continue to believe I had Trey’s nanny killed, and there’s nothing I can do to fight that.”

I nodded.

Marsellus said, “The advice you were getting in the days after Trey’s death, to give me some space, was that from Cletus Mooney?”

Again I was surprised. He saw it and said, “I didn’t learn about the connection until months after you left town. A business associate of mine used to see you two together in the clubs. You went to high school together, is that it?”

“He’s my cousin,” I said.

“Interesting guy,” Marsellus said. “Lotta people curious to see what kind of work he’ll be doing when he’s thirty.” He looked out the window again, then back to me. Finally he said, “This is a very big thing that you’re asking me to do.”

“I know,” I said.

“What are you going to do if I say no?”

“Stay hidden as long as I can, fight if I have to fight,” I said. “I know this is a big thing I’m asking, a lifetime, really. But I think this baby’s going to be something special. I think he’ll have things to give you, not just you to him.”

Marsellus was quiet a long time. I resisted the urge to jump into the silence with more selling points.

Finally he said, “Trey is buried next to my father in Inglewood Park Cemetery. Go apologize to him, like you have to me, and then we’re square.”

“You’ll take the baby?”

“Yes,” he said. “I will.”

In the first-floor entryway, Marsellus’s man took out the clip to my SIG and reloaded it for me, then handed it back.

Marsellus had accompanied me down, Henry in his arms. He said to me, “What are you going to do about Skouras? Do you expect to be able to hide from him forever?”

“I don’t know,” I said honestly.

“I won’t protect you from his people. You and I are square, but I don’t owe it to you to start a war with an organization like his.”

“I know,” I said.

“Good luck, then,” he said. Then he turned to his driver. “Please take Miss Cain wherever she needs to go.”

The quickest way out of state would have been to get to southern Nevada, or to Arizona. The roads in that direction were also more lightly traveled than those going north, which was a good thing when you were driving a stolen car, like I was-I’d had Marsellus’s driver take me back to where I’d left it, apparently unnoticed and untagged. I’d get rid of it as soon as I could afford to.

All in all, I really didn’t want to get on the 101 north. More than that, I didn’t want to go into San Francisco. It was Skouras land. But I had to. Most of what was in my room over Shay’s office I didn’t need, but there was the small matter of my new driver’s license, which I’d arranged to have mailed there; I wasn’t going so deep underground that I wouldn’t need that. Then there was my Wheelock’s Latin , and inside that was my birth certificate and my only photo of my father.