Dead and Gone

“They wanted to kill you because they knew you. We do not know why. Assassins kill when they are paid. But those who hire assassins, it is always for one of two reasons: it is either what you did, or what you are. What you described, it was too intricate for simple revenge. Too expensive. And it has become very, very complicated. So it must be that whoever wants you dead also fears you.”

“Look, Gem, all this … logic of yours is fine, but—”

“Indulge me, please. Assume they know you. Or know about you, anyway. They do not know where you are. Or even if you are alive. But one thing I am certain they would not expect—that you would be married.”

“Huh?”

“Oh, I do not mean you could not marry. Have you ever—?”

“No.”

“Yes. All right. What I meant was, you would not be … traveling as a married man. With a wife, see?”

“So you’re coming along as cover?”

“I am coming along because I am your woman.”

“You keep saying that.”

“That?”

“That you’re my woman.”

“I am.”

“My ‘woman’ … What does that mean in Cambodian, my boss?”

“Don’t be silly!” She giggled. “I am very obedient.”

“So long as—?”

“So long as the orders are sensible,” she said, climbing off my lap.

Gem sat quietly next to me in the back seat of Flacco’s Impala on the way back up to Portland. Maybe being a married woman required more decorum.

“I am going to build one for myself, very soon,” Gordo said to me. I figured Flacco had heard this a few hundred times.

“Which way are you looking to go?”

“Like this one,” he said, patting the Impala’s padded dash. “But not no Chevy, that’s for sure.”

“Because …?”

“I need my ride to be … I don’t know, man … like no other one on the road. But I want to stay with the factory look,” he said, with a nod in Flacco’s direction. “That’s what’s happening now.”

“Me, I like the fifties better than the sixties for that,” I told him.

“Fifties? I don’t know, man. The sixties, the shapes were … wilder, you know?”

“Maybe. Maybe too wild. If I was doing it, I’d want something people’d have to look twice at just to figure out what it was.”

“Hey, hombre,” Flacco threw in, “there’s no way to do that when they made millions of each model then. What you mean? Something like a ’55 Crown Vic? Or a ’57 Fury? They’re cool, all right, but you could pick one out at a hundred yards if you leave them looking near- stock.”

“You’re right. But the one I was thinking of, it’d slip right by, you did it right.”

“So which one, man?” Gordo wanted to know.

“Picture this,” I told them. “A ’56 Packard Caribbean. The hardtop, not the convertible. Strip all the chrome, even that fat wide strip down the sides. Then you slam it all around—not put it in the weeds, just a nice drop. Give the top a subtle chop … maybe only a couple of inches. I see it with some old-style mag wheels, like American Racing used to put out. Paint it about twenty coats of the deepest, darkest purple-black—you know, that Chromallusion stuff that changes color depending on how you look at it.”

“I never seen one of those,” Gordo said.

“I did,” Flacco said. “It had those giant taillights, right? Cathedrals?”

“That’s the one.”

“The man’s nailed it, compadre,” Flacco told his partner. “That would be the biggest, bossest, most evil-looking ride on the whole coast. And those suckers had some serious cubes. Mucho room for anything you wanted to do with the rubber, too.”

“Problem is finding one,” I reminded him.

“Oh, they’ll be out there,” Flacco assured me. “This part of the country, people keep their old cars. There’s always Arizona, too—we got plenty people down there could keep a lookout for us. And you should have seen this one when I first got it. Just a rusted-out shell.”

“You went frame-off?”

“Si!” he said, proudly. “Me and my man, here, we got about a million hours in it. Gordo’s the mechanic, I’m the bodyman.”

“Be harder for the Packard,” I said. “They make all kinds of NOS parts for Chevys, but …”

“Be more work, is all,” Gordo said, reaching over to high-five Flacco.