Montana (26 page)

L
OLA’S PHONE
buzzed and buzzed in her pocket. She’d set it on vibrate the first time it rang and had ignored it ever since as she jotted notes about Vince Fantonelli—Senior and Junior both. Or, as she was learning to think of them, Big Fanny and Little Fanny. She’d groaned in belated recognition when she read about Fantonelli Transport’s mob connections. Of course, she thought. Trucking. That old cover. The nicknames, hated equally by father and son, apparently had been bestowed by resentful undercover federal agents who’d spent too many hours lurking outside restaurants as they tailed Big Fanny. Now Big Fanny was sitting in a Canadian prison, no doubt growing even larger on an inmate’s starchy diet while his lawyers fended off one attempt after another from the U.S.Attorney’s Office in Chicago to extradite him on extortion, racketeering, and all the other usual charges that screamed “mob.” The Canadians had filed but a single charge against him—murder. In the death of his son.

Newspapers had a field day. “Mob Boss Suspected in Son’s Slaying,” read the
Chicago Tribune.
“Heir’s Death, Founder’s Arrest, Threaten Stability of Major Trucking Firm,” fussed the
Calgary Herald.
Lola went to the tabloids, chuckling over headlines that inevitably spanked Big Fanny or sent him off to the Big House. Which was nothing compared to the frenzy they’d gone into over his son’s death.

It started with a body in a Calgary alley, its sharp suit all the more notable because the parts that would usually have protruded from its fine-weave worsted—namely hands and feet—were gone entirely, lopped off at the hemlines. Its head mercifully remained, albeit as a shapeless mass, crushed by repeated blows from a brick, the whole gelatinous mass embedded with bits of reddish, crumbly stuff, like sand in a jellyfish. One tabloid ran a full-page photo of the nattily clad torso with an arch headline. “Do You Know This Suit?” The sartorial remnants had survived more intact than the body within. And indeed, somebody did know it, a Chinatown tailor whose wizened features and mangled English were the stuff of central casting—or at least, were made to seem that way—as he described the day Little Fanny came into his shop and special-ordered the fabric from London, demanding a dandyish nipped-in waist and snug-fitting pants. The tailor had held an impromptu news conference. Videos abounded on YouTube.

“Mr. Fanny, he dress left,” the man said with a sly smile, his hands sketching a substantial bulge. Lola imagined too well the delight of the assembled reporters and cameramen, to whom the only possible thing better than a handless, footless, faceless corpse was a handless, footless, faceless, well-hung corpse.

Authorities made short work of arresting Big Fanny once the body had been identified. His difficulties with his son, who’d caused the family no end of trouble by an inexplicable push into routes commandeered by Mexican cartels, had been an open secret for years. Little Fanny was banished to Calgary at the turn of the millennium to run the company’s branch there, with the added insult that he was to confine his activities to the legitimate end of things. His gruesome end indicated he hadn’t. Different newspapers quoted various unnamed law enforcement sources saying that shortly before his death, Little Fanny had tipped off a go-between that his father had put out a hit on him, and that he was ready to talk. But Big Fanny had proved quicker than the Mounties. The Canadians kept the whole fiasco quiet until after Little Fanny’s funeral, waiting politely until the cortege of limos delivered Big Fanny to the Calgary airport for his return flight to Chicago before whisking him—as much as someone Big Fanny’s size could be whisked—away from the boarding area in handcuffs.

Lola went back once again to the company’s website. She tried using the search field, and then viewed pages individually, unsuccessfully seeking mention of Johnny Running Wolf. She wondered when, and how, he’d eased out of the job with Fantonelli Transport after the hit on Little Fanny. If maybe he’d been the one who turned on his friend, passed damning information to Big Fanny about his son’s wayward loyalties. She paged through her notes, looking for more particular connections and saw none. She threw down the pen. It took a hop and caromed off the wall, leaving a mark. Lola flexed her fingers. The woman at the front desk glared her way. The library’s door burst open.

“I’ve been calling and calling.” Jan’s voice rang aggrieved across the room. Students, earbud cords snaking across their work, stayed focused.

“Wait until you see what I’ve got,” Lola began.

“No. You wait and see what
I’ve
got.” Jan stood just inside the door, refusing to move in Lola’s direction.

“Wait until you see what happens if this continues one minute more,” the librarian snapped. “Both of you. Out.”

J
AN GRABBED
Lola’s hand with steel fingers. “Let’s hope he’s still there,” she said, tugging her down the hall. Lola tried to shake her off, then broke into a lurching run behind her.

“Who?”

“Gallagher. You’re right. He wasn’t telling us everything. And with good reason.” Jan let go when they reached the stairs, taking them two at a time, her steps echoing off the walls. Lola caught up with her at Gallagher’s office door, bending to catch her breath as Jan pounded the heel of her hand against it.

“He’s gone,” Lola said. “What was so important?”

Jan blew on her reddened palm, then held it out to Lola. “His hand. Did you see his hand?”

Lola had, in fact, paid particular attention to Gallagher’s hands, guiltily so, knowing it to be a way of avoiding looking at his legs. “He’d hurt it,” she said immediately. “It was all swollen and scraped. I thought maybe he’d fallen.”

“He had,” Jan crowed. She held out her phone so that Lola could see the story there from the
Calgary Herald
about the attack on the esteemed Professor Gallagher. The call to police had come shortly after midnight. When they arrived, Gallagher lay in his bathrobe just inside his smashed front door beside the broken remains of his wheelchair, blood curling from the corners of his mouth. But for the defensive wounds to his hands, his injuries were all internal, ribs broken, kidneys bruised. One man, he’d told police. Masked. Silent, but for the grunt that accompanied each blow. No, he had no idea why someone would do that to him. None. He was adamant.

“Look at the date,” Jan commanded.

“June fifteenth.” Lola counted back. “About ten days ago. Mary Alice was still alive then.”

“That’s right. She wrote this a day earlier.” Another story flashed on the screen. Mary Alice’s profile of Johnny Running Wolf. “I think that’s why he got beaten up. And maybe why Mary Alice got killed. I’ll bet whoever killed her knew they’d talked. Gallagher wasn’t playing us. He’s just scared to death. No way he could risk telling us directly whatever he told Mary Alice.”

Lola put her hand to the locked office door. “No wonder he hung up on me.”

“A
T LEAST
we’re going the right way,” Jan said as she drove southbound through Calgary. The northbound lanes were clogged with traffic. She stopped at a light. “Everybody’s heading into town for the rodeo. Except for those guys.” She jerked her thumb at a pair of cowboys emerging from a bar. “They must have been cut early.”

The men headed down the sidewalk, swaggery in their boots. Lola’s eyes went to the W stitched atop their back pockets, to the whitened circle worn into each right pocket by the container of chew within. “Pull over,” she told Jan.

“What for?”

But Lola was already out of the car, calling to the men, holding up her phone. “Mind if I take a picture?”

“You’re embarrassing us,” Jan hissed from the car. “These guys aren’t some sort of tourist attraction. Those aren’t costumes. Rodeo is how they pay the bills.”

The men stopped, uncertain. Lola snapped a couple of pictures and handed the phone to Jan. “Can you take one of all of us?” She turned to the men. “We don’t have cowboys where I’m from.” She wrapped her arms around waists that felt like steel bands beneath shirts smelling of starch and sweat. The men grinned obligingly.

“Cheese!” said Lola.

L
OLA DOZED
as the car sped back toward the border, awaiting with resignation the images behind her eyelids, Mary Alice on the ground and awake, her mouth moving in a soundless question, the motion tugging at the hole in her cheek. It winked redly at Lola. She turned her face away but Mary Alice’s hand flew up and wrapped the soft flesh of her upper arm, fingernails digging through the fabric of her pullover, calling to her. “Lola. Lola.”

“Oh, Mary Alice. I’m so sorry,” she murmured, and then her head cracked against the window and she opened her eyes.

Jan let go of her arm. Her voice was small and scared. “We’re at the border. What do we do now? Tell me, Lola. I mean, Maria. What do we do?”

“Shhh,” Lola murmured. “I’m trying to sleep.” She slumped back against the headrest. The guard approached with heavy, purposeful footsteps. “Passports.” He raised his voice. “Yours, too. Miss. Your passport.”

Lola yawned and stretched her arms above her head, opening her eyes by degrees. She handed her passport to Jan, who gave it to the guard without looking at her. As he thumbed through it, Lola leaned across Jan and held her phone to the window. “Smile!”

“What do you think you’re doing?” The guard grabbed the phone from her hand. Her passport slapped against the ground. “Photographs are absolutely not allowed. How do you delete . . . okay, I’ve got it.” His big hands worked at the phone. “There. Oh. Oh.” He chuckled and his expression, when he turned back to the car, had changed entirely. “Enjoyed ourselves at the Stampede, did we?” He held up the phone, flicking through the photos of Lola and the cowboys. “I’d say we have ourselves the makings of a buckle bunny.”

Jan shrugged and smiled and flipped her hair around. “You’ll have to excuse my friend. It was her first rodeo.”

He snapped the phone shut and retrieved Lola’s passport from the ground and handed both back to Jan. “I can see that. You drive carefully. It’s getting late and you’ve still got a ways to go. Welcome home.”

“W
AIT,
” L
OLA
commanded. She slitted her eyes and watched the customs station recede in the side mirror.