Sue Grafton - L is for Lawless

I tucked the two room keys in my pocket – mine and the one I'd stolen from Laura Huckaby's desk – and peered through the spy hole. At least Rawson wasn't lurking in the corridor. I went down the fire stairs, avoiding the elevator, and found myself emerging on the far side of the lobby.

When I reached the hotel coffee shop, I paused in the doorway. Rawson wasn't hard to spot. He was the only guy in there with a swollen green-and-purple face. He had a bandage across his nose, one black eye, a split lip, assorted cuts, and three fingers on his right hand bound together with tape. He drank his coffee with a spoon, possibly to spare himself the pain from broken, cracked, or missing teeth. His white T-shirt was so new, I could still see the package creases. Either he was buying his shirts a size too small or he was built better than I remembered. At least the short sleeves allowed me to admire his dragon tattoo.

I crossed the room and slid into the booth across from him. "When'd you get here?"

There were two menus on the table, and he passed me one. "Three-thirty in the morning. The plane was delayed because of fog. I picked up a rental car at the airport. I tried calling your room as soon as I got in, but the operator wouldn't put me through, so I waited until eight." His eyes were bloodshot from the battering, which gave his otherwise mild features a demonic cast. I could see that his left earlobe had been stitched back into place.

"You're too considerate," I said. "You have a room?"

"Yeah, 1006." His smile flickered and faded. "Look, I know you got no particular reason to trust me, but it's time to deal straight."

"You might have done that two days ago before we got into this… whatever it is."

The waitress appeared with a coffeepot in hand. She was the motherly sort, who looked as if she'd take in stray dogs and cats. Her frizzy gray hair was held in place by a hairnet, like a spiderweb across her head, and her gravelly voice suggested a lifelong affection for unfiltered cigarettes. She flicked a speculative look at Ray. "What happened to you?"

"I was in a wreck," he said briefly. "You got any aspirin, I'll leave you money in my will."

"Let me check in the back. I can probably come up with something." She turned to me. "How about some coffee? You look like you could use some."

Mutely I held up my coffee cup, and she filled it to the brim. She set the coffeepot aside and reached for her order pad. "You ready to order or you want more time?"

"This is fine," I said, indicating that the cup of coffee would suffice.

Ray spoke up. "Have some breakfast. My treat. It's the least I can do."

I looked back at the waitress. "In that case, make it coffee, orange juice, bacon, link sausage, three scrambled eggs, and some rye toast."

He held up two fingers. "Same here."

Once she'd departed, he leaned forward on his elbows. He looked like a light-heavyweight boxer the day after the championship went back to the other guy. "I don't blame you for feeling sour, but honest… after the break-in at Johnny's, I didn't think he'd come back. I figured that was the end of it, so who was the wiser?"

"'He,' who?"

"I'm getting to that," he said. "Oh, before I forget. You know the key Bucky took from Johnny's safe?"

"Yes," I said cautiously.

"You still have it?"

I hesitated for a flicker of a second, and then I lied on instinct. Why confide in him? So far he hadn't told me anything. "I don't have it with me, but I know where it is. Why?"

"I've been thinking about it. I mean, it has to be important. Why else would Johnny keep it in his safe?"

"I thought you knew. Didn't you tell Charlie I was in danger because of it?"

"Danger? Not me. I never said that. I wonder where he got that idea?"

"I talked to Henry last night. He says that's how you persuaded Charlie to tell you where I was. You said I was in danger and that's why Charlie gave you the information."

Ray shook his head, baffled. "He must have misunderstood," he said. "Sure, I was looking for you, but I never said anything about danger. That's odd. Old guy can't hear. He might have got it mixed up."

"Never mind. Just skip that. Let's talk about something else."

He glanced over toward the entrance to the restaurant, where a motley group of adolescent kids were beginning to collect. It must have been the same kids I'd seen running out on the road the day before. They must have been in town for some kind of track-and-field event. The noise level increased, and Ray's voice went up to compete with the din. "You know, you really surprised me in my hotel room the other day."

"How so?"

"You were right about Johnny. He was never in the service. He was in jail like you said."

I love being right. It always cheers me up. "What about the story about how you knew each other? Was any of that true?"

"In the main," he said. He paused and smiled, revealing a gap where a first molar should have been. He put a hand against his cheek where the bruising was deep blue with an aura of darker purple. "Don't look now, but we're surrounded."

The track team seemed to spread out and around us like a liquid, settling into booths on all sides of us. The lone waitress was passing out menus like programs for some sporting competition.

"Quit stalling," I said.

"Sorry. We did meet in Louisville, but it wasn't at the Jeffersonville Boat Works. It wasn't 1942, neither. It was earlier. Maybe '39 or '40. We were in the drunk tank together and struck up a friendship. I was nineteen at the time, and I'd been in jail a couple times. We hung out together some, you know, just messing around. Neither of us went in the army. We were both 4-F. I forget Johnny's disability. Something to do with a ruptured disk. I had two busted eardrums and a bum knee. Bad weather, that sucker's still giving me fits. Anyway, we had to do something - we were bored out of our gourds – so we started burglarizing joints, breaking into warehouses, stores, you know, things like that. I guess we pulled one job too many and got caught in the act. I ended up doing county time, but he got sent to state reformatory down in Lexington. He did twenty-two months of a five-year bid and moved his family out to California once he got sprung. After that, he was clean as far as I ever heard."

"What about you?"

He dropped his gaze. "Yeah, well, you know, after Johnny left, I fell into bad company. I thought I was smart, but I was just a punk like everyone else. A guy steered me wrong on another job we pulled. Cops picked us up and I got sent to the Federal Correctional Institution up in Ashland, Kentucky, where I spent another fifteen months. I was out for a year and then in again. I never had the dough for a fancy-pants attorney, so I had to take pot luck. One thing and another, I've been inside ever since."

"You've been in prison for over forty years?"

"Off and on. You think there aren't guys who've been in prison that long? I could've been out a lot sooner, but my temper got the better of me until I finally figured out how to behave," he said. "I suffered from what the docs call a 'lack of impulse control.' I learned that in prison. How to talk that way. Back then, if I thought of it, I did it. I never killed nobody," he added in haste.

"This is a big relief," I said.

"Well, later in prison, but that was self-defense."

I nodded. "Ah."

Rawson went right on. "Anyway, in the late forties, I started writing to this woman named Maria I met through a pen pal ad. I managed to escape once and I was out long enough for us to get married. She got pregnant and we had us a little girl I haven't seen in years. A lot of women fall in love with inmates. You'd be surprised."

"Nothing people do surprises me," I said.

"Another time, when I was out, I ended up breaking parole. Sometimes I think Johnny felt responsible. Like if it hadn't been for him, I might never have gotten in so tight with the criminal element. Wasn't true, but I think that's what he believed."