Greenmantle (18 page)

“Oh, yeah? So how
is
Tony?”

A brief smile touched the man’s lips. “You’re Tony. Mario sent me.”

“Okay,” Valenti said. “Maybe I am.” He lowered the UZI. “You had breakfast yet?”

“I stopped at a truck stop an hour or so ago. I could use a coffee, though.”

“You got it.”

“Do you want to fill me in on the situation?”

Valenti nodded. “Sure. Let’s go inside. One thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got a couple of civilians inside—an upfront lady and her kid. I’d appreciate it if we didn’t talk too loose in front of them.”

“No problem. I’m Tom Bannon,” he added, holding out his hand as Valenti mounted the steps.

Valenti took the hand. “Thanks for coming.”

* * *

“You can’t be sure he made you, then?” Bannon asked as Valenti finished sketching out the problem for him. The UZI was back in its hiding place and they were sitting at the kitchen table, the coffee pot on a warming plate between them, each with a half-finished mug at hand. Valenti had kept the story simple. Things were going to get weird enough without his bringing up the business with the stag and Ali’s wild girl.

“Oh, he made me all right,” Valenti replied. “The thing is, what’s he going to do with the information? To tell you the truth, I was expecting some trouble by now, but maybe he hasn’t got the word out yet.”

“Maybe he’s sitting on it.”

“What for?”

Bannon shrugged. “Christ, who knows? There’s some talk on the street about him—he’s supposed to have some big deal going down. Maybe he can’t afford to get mixed up in family business right now.”

“I don’t think so,” Valenti said. “Him and me—we never hit it off, you know what I mean?”

“With what I know about Shaw, I’m not surprised. He’s got to be the main man in the deal or he gets antsy.”

Valenti nodded. “That’s the feeling he gave me.”

“So how do you want to play this?” Bannon asked. “Are we going to wait them out, or do we take it to them?”

“Wait them out for now. I wouldn’t know where to start looking for—” Valenti broke off as he heard a door open and close upstairs.

“Who’m I supposed to be?” Bannon asked in a whisper.

“Friend. Up for the week on holiday.”

“Okay. Anything else I should know?”

Valenti shook his head. “Hey, Ali,” he said as he saw her coming down the stairs. “C’mon in here. I got a friend I want you to meet.”

* * *

Ali woke from a dream in which she was mediating an argument between Tony, the stag and Earl Shaw as to which of them was her real father. The stag had a man’s body in the dream and was wearing denims and a T-shirt that said, “Have you hugged your child today?”

Coming out of that dream in a strange bedroom, it took her a few moments to figure out where she was and why. She sat up abruptly, her chest tighting with sudden fear. Her mother…

She got up and dressed, then padded out of the guestroom. She peered down the stairwell, but the house felt empty. Had her mother even arrived last night? Or had Earl Shaw caught her on her way home and…and…

She couldn’t finish the thought. Stepping quickly to Tony’s bedroom, she cracked the door open. She’d ask Tony because Tony’d know. He wouldn’t have gone to sleep without making sure Mom was okay. When she saw her mother asleep on Tony’s bed, a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding left her in a long sigh. She hurried across the room and knelt by the bed, putting an arm around her mother. If anything had happened to her…

The sound of a car’s engine came to her, the engine dying, then the slam of a car door. Ali tensed again. Too scared to move, she pressed herself closer against Tony’s bed, holding her mother. Frankie moved in her sleep but didn’t wake. Ali heard Tony’s and another man’s voice drift up from downstairs. Relief loosened tense muscles once more.

She gave her mother a kiss, then went back out into the hall. She opened and closed the door to the guestroom loud enough so that Tony would know she was awake, then headed down the stairs.

* * *

Tony introduced her to his friend while she poured herself a coffee. She added lots of milk and a couple of spoons of sugar, then sat down at the table with the two men.

“Tony,” she began hesitantly, shooting Bannon a quick glance. “Did you talk to my mom last night?”

Tony nodded.

“How is she?”

“Not so good. But we talked a bit and I think she was feeling better by the time she went to bed. She had a rough day, so maybe we should let her sleep for a bit longer.” He paused, then added, “How are
you
?”

Ali thought about last night, about what would have happened to her if Tony hadn’t shown up…. It didn’t make for pleasant thinking. Given her druthers for a father, she’d take Tony over Earl Shaw any day. And the stag? She wondered as the dream flashed momentarily before her eyes.

“Ali?”

She looked up. “It’s really scary. Why can’t he just leave us alone?”

“Some guys…” Tony began, then he sighed. “I don’t know, kid. The money your momma’s got left after rebuilding that house—that’s a lot of money we’re talking about. Some guys’ll do anything for money, step on anyone.”

Ali nodded glumly. She toyed with her coffee cup, wishing she knew more about who Tom Bannon was so that she’d know what they could and couldn’t talk about.

“Tony tells me you read a lot,” Bannon said.

She glanced at him. “I guess.”

“I like to read, too, but I wasn’t thinking when I packed to come up here and didn’t bring any books with me.”

“What kind of stuff do you read?”

“Mysteries, thrillers—anything with a bit of bite to it.”

“I can lend you some books if you want,” Ali said, interested despite herself. “Did you ever try Tony Hillerman?”

Valenti nodded to himself as Bannon kept Ali talking. It was a good move. Keep her mind off all the shit that was piling up around them. But meanwhile, he realized, he was going to have to come up with something. First off he had to get Ali and her momma out of here. And then…then he had to deal with the trouble Ricca was going to dump on their heads.

* * *

“No,” Frankie said.

They’d all had breakfast once she’d gotten up, then Ali and Bannon had gone down to the Treasure house for some books, leaving Valenti to try to talk Frankie into taking a short vacation. Frankie was having nothing to do with the idea.

“You don’t really understand,” Valenti began.

“Oh, I understand,” Frankie said. “God, I lived with the man, didn’t I? But I swore I wasn’t going to run anymore. I’ve been scared of Earl for too many years, Tony. It’s time I stood up to him once and for all.”

Now what could he say? That it wasn’t just Shaw? He decided to take a different tack. “What about Ali?” he asked.

“It’s… This is something that we’re both going to have to live with,” Frankie said after a moment. “I wasn’t in the best of shape last night, so when you offered to put us up, I have to admit I jumped at the chance. I was scared, mostly for Ali, but for me, too. But I don’t want to always be turning to a man for help. Can you understand that, Tony? I have to make it on my own and Ali’s going to have to learn to do the same.”

Valenti shook his head. “People got to help each other, or what’ve we got? Maybe it’s a man helping a woman, maybe it’s a woman helping a man—what’s the difference?”

“There shouldn’t be any, but there is,” Frankie said.

She ran a hand through her hair. Valenti wondered what it’d feel like to touch that hair, all those curls…. Frankie’s clear gaze settled on him.

“I’ve been dependent on men for my whole life, Tony,” she said. “Even after I left Earl, there were always men in my life that I was leaning on—emotionally dependent on, even if they weren’t supporting me in the traditional sense of the word. I’d probably still be going on like that—not wanting to, but needing to—but then I won that lottery and everything changed. It wasn’t just the money, you see. It was the chance to go anywhere I wanted and start over again.”

“And you picked Lanark.”

Frankie smiled. “I guess it seems a little weird, doesn’t it? But I used to live in that house. That’s where I grew up. When I was a little girl, my father used to beat up on my mother and the thing I learned was that the man runs the family. That what he says goes.

“I left Earl, sure, but I don’t think I ever got away from that lesson, so going back is my way of learning things over again. My mother ran away, just like I did from Earl. That showed me one way of dealing with the problem. But now I’ve come back and I’m not running away again. I might move away someday, but it’ll be because I want to, not because I’ve been chased away.”

“Well, I can understand that,” Valenti said, though he was a little uncomfortable with the idea that a man wasn’t the head of his own family. The wife and the husband, they each had their role, didn’t they?

“Do you believe that men and women are equal, Tony? That they should have the same rights?”

“What? Oh, sure.”

Frankie nodded, missing his hesitation. “But the woman’s side of that balance has a long way to go before the scales start to weigh out evenly. It’s funny, but Ali’s the one that’s made me see a lot of this—this whole idea of not only talking about equality, but
doing
something about it. She reads up on it.” Frankie laughed. “Lectures me when she figures I’m stepping out of line. She’s good for me. God, I love her.”

“She’s a good kid.”

“She’s a dynamite kid,” Frankie said. “She’s luckier in some ways than the women of my own generation, too. We were growing up when this whole thing came to a head—when Women’s Lib was like a swear word and any woman involved in it had to be a lesbian.”

Valenti shifted uncomfortably. He’d been guilty of that kind of attitude himself, when he’d bothered to think about it at all. He looked at Frankie, but she didn’t seem to notice his discomfort.

“I worry about what all this is doing to Ali,” Frankie finished. “Sometimes I feel that living the way we have has made her miss out on her childhood. She doesn’t hang around with other kids a lot and she talks and acts like a little adult half the time. Sometimes I think she’s got a better handle on things than I do. Like women’s rights.

“Ali’s grown up with that concept being a part of everyday life. Not that the battle’s won—not by a longshot. But at least
something’s
being done. Maybe it’ll be easier still for my grandchildren. God, I hope so. If all of Ali’s generation were more like her, I wouldn’t have any worries at all. But then I have to ask myself, is missing out on a normal childhood going to hurt her in the long run?”

“Ali’s the kind of kid who’ll do good no matter what she decides to take on,” Valenti said.

“Oh, I don’t doubt that. I just worry about not being a good mother, I guess.”

“I don’t think that’s anything you got to worry about,” Valenti said. “Ali talks about you all the time. You’re number one in her book.”

Frankie smiled gratefully.

“I’ve got to be honest with you,” Valenti went on. “I’ve never thought a whole lot about what you’re talking about with this women’s rights stuff, but listening to you, well, it makes me think.”

“All men aren’t to blame,” Frankie said. “A lot of them are just victims too. It’s hard to get away from sexual stereotyping when our whole society is based on it.”

Valenti nodded. He was going to have to think about this some more. “So you’re not going?” he asked then, taking the conversation back to its beginnings.

Frankie shook her head.

“I’ve got to tell you something else then,” he said, “while we’re…” He searched for the word.

“Baring our souls?”

“Yeah. I haven’t always been what you’d want to call a good man. I’ve been involved with some…” Again he searched for a word. “Some guys who aren’t on the up and up.”

Frankie leaned forward. “What are you saying?”

Valenti sighed. Christ, he didn’t want to get too deep into anything, tell her things that would scare her off. He liked Frankie. He was comfortable with her and had to admire her for wanting to make her stand. And he really didn’t want to lose his friendship with Ali. If things worked out, if he could deal with Ricca and Shaw, and maybe hold on to what he had here, he didn’t want to have Frankie telling him to stay away from the kid. So what could he say now?

“What I’m saying,” he said finally, “is that I’ve run into your ex before, and he’s a—pardon the language—but he’s a piece of shit. That, you already knew. But what you maybe don’t know is that he’s tight with some pretty heavy people. I mean, the usual case you get where the man’s hassling his ex—it’s not good, but it can usually be handled just like you’re planning to. But your ex… He’s into guns, Frankie, and he wasn’t alone when he came looking for you and Ali.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“It’s good that you’re scared,” Valenti said. “This is a scary business.”