Shift: A Novel

Ivelitsch went below, came out a moment later with Naz’s unconscious body draped over his shoulder. He laid her on the dock, then handed Garza a brown glass bottle with an eyedropper built into the lid.

“Keep her out until you get to the safe house. Trust me, you’ll have a much easier time of it.”

“Uh, sure,” Garza said, looking at the wisp of a girl lying on the dock. “Is that all?”

“I think I can handle this last thing myself,” Ivelitsch said, pulling an automatic pistol from his jacket.

“Wha—” Garza said, but Ivelitsch was already firing. Ten seconds later, all four of Giancana’s men were dead. Ivelitsch got back in the boat. Garza expected him to toss the bodies overboard, but all he did was kick away the man slumped over the wheel.

“You’ve joined a very select group, Mr. Garza,” Ivelitsch said, starting the boat. He gunned the motor— something about having a nuclear bomb in the hold had apparently made him unconcerned about detection. “I’d advise you to remember just what the price of admission is. I’ll dump the bodies in the Straits,” he added. “Save you the trouble of having to bury them.”

“Uh, thanks. I must’ve missed that entry in Miss Manners.” Garza nudged the girl on the pier with his left foot. “Any other instructions?”

Ivelitsch was backing the boat from the dock. “Keep her alive. What happens to the kid is up to you.”

“The kid?”

Ivelitsch didn’t bother to look back. “Apparently she’s knocked up.”

The boat’s nose pointed seaward now; Ivelitsch opened the throttle and it roared out of the lagoon. When it was gone, Garza looked down at the beautiful sleeping face of the girl on the dock. Only then did he realize the Russian hadn’t told him her name. So much for Miss Manners.

He reached down for her—it was going to be awkward dragging her to the truck with his bum leg—but just as his hand touched hers, the girl’s eyes fluttered open. Despite himself, Garza jumped back.

The girl looked neither right nor left, but stared straight into Garza’s eyes.

“Where am I?”

The girl’s eyes seemed as deep as a lagoon as well, and the longer Garza stared into them, the deeper he fell. He suddenly realized he didn’t know if the girl had spoken to him in English or Spanish.

“Eres en Cuba,” he said quietly, then added, “Miss Haverman.” It occurred to him again that Ivelitsch had never told him the girl’s name, but really, what else could it be?

Still Naz stared straight into his eyes. She didn’t speak—at any rate he didn’t see her lips move—but even so, Garza was sure she’d asked him a question. Requested a favor. There was only one answer possible.

“No te preocupadas, Miss Haverman,” he said, his voice more sincere than it had ever been in his life. He dropped his cane and hoisted her into his arms; if his leg hurt him, he didn’t feel it. “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.”

Dallas, TX

November 22, 1963

“Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid!” BC yelled at himself as he ran onto the—splash!—wet balcony of his motel. This was the second time Chandler had given him the slip in three days. Why the hell hadn’t he handcuffed him to the bed?

The sky was clotted with clouds leaking gray drizzle; an oily puddle filled in the space where he’d parked last night, so Chandler’d been gone for a while. A young couple was loading suitcases into a pale bluish greenish Rambler and BC yelled down to them.

“Wait!”

“What’s the holdup?” The husband smiled brightly at BC as he ran up.

“FBI.” BC flashed a counterfeit badge he’d purchased for all of five dollars. “I’m commandeering this car for official business.” He’d backed out of the space before he noticed the baby in the seat beside him, handed it off to its startled-looking mother through the window.

There was no map in the car, so it took him the better part of an hour to find the first address Jarrell had written down. Thank God he’d committed them to memory—Chandler’d taken the list, even though he said his own memory had become virtually eidetic. The place was all the way out in north Dallas, a withered single-story ranch with a picture window veiled by wrinkled blinds. BC drove right past the house and parked the Rambler halfway down the block, then made his way to the house using a few stunted live oaks for cover. The rain had stopped by then, but the air was thick with moisture steaming off the ground in the rising heat. The brown lawn, though wet, was otherwise unwatered and unmown. Moreover, the strands of grass that had sprung from the cracks in the driveway were a good six inches long, which is to say: no one was using this driveway.

No one lived here.

Two scenarios sprang to BC’s mind. The first, unlikely, was that the house was a decoy to draw BC and Chandler away from Melchior’s real target. The second, more probable, was that it was a trap.

BC immediately ducked behind a straggly hedge that separated the house from its neighbor and made his way toward the back fence. He peered through a crack, saw nothing, vaulted the fence, and crept toward the corner of the house. The first window he came to was uncurtained, the room beyond empty save for a bare mattress and box spring, an open closet with a few bent hangers on the rod. He tried the sash. It was locked. He went to the second window. This one was narrow, opened onto a small bathroom. More to the point, the lock had been forced and the wet ground below was trampled with fresh footprints. Somehow BC knew: Chandler. His first thought was Thank God! and his second was I am going to kill you!

He had to take his jacket off to squeeze through the narrow aperture, and even so a button snapped off his shirt as he shimmied into the house. The little noise it made as it bounced off the linoleum sounded loud as a gunshot in BC’s ears, but the rest of the house remained quiet. The bathroom door stood open to the hall. Bedrooms to the left, living quarters to the right. It seemed unlikely that Melchior would be waiting in a bedroom. BC drew his gun and went right.