'How come I can't remember this broad?'
Nick looked at Wily, as if expecting him to know the answer. The pit boss shrugged his shoulders.
'She sure remembers you' was all he could think to say.
13
Sunday morning found Nola circling the covered parking garage at McCarran International Airport. The lot was full, and she parked a half-mile away in Long Term, then hiked to the terminal, her shoes nearly sticking to the baking macadam.
A pregnant-looking jet roared overhead, arcing gracefully so as to give the passengers a last look before ascending into the cottony clouds. Growing up on Long Island's south shore near Queens, Nola had spent many afternoons at Kennedy Airport, smoking joints and lying in a hidden spot off the runway, watching the jets take off. How could her youth, which she'd hated, now seem so warm and fuzzy?
The terminal's freezing cold air snapped her awake. Someone who liked to walk had designed McCarran's terminals, and soon she was wishing she'd brought more sensible shoes. She'd dressed up nice, and her pumps were killing her feet.
By the time she reached security, she'd removed her shoes and was walking barefoot. She passed through a metal detector and an alarm sounded. A sleep-walking guard ran an electronic baton up and down her legs. Her keys.
The new terminal, D, required a tram ride and two long walks to reach its last gate, and she stopped along the way, bought a pretzel, and tossed four quarters in a Quartermania slot machine. Her horoscope had called this her lucky day, and she pulled the arm, thinking it was certainly about time.
Five minutes later and twenty dollars richer, Nola reached gate 84. The booth was deserted; the next flight not until noon. Slipping her pumps back on, she removed a pair of binoculars from her purse and gazed out the window. A quarter mile away, a bus with barred windows was parked on the tarmac, the words U.S. Immigration stenciled on its side. Standing in the bus's shade, twelve chained Mexicans awaited deportation. She studied each man's face. Raul was not among them.
Her breath grew short. Raul was a Houdini when it came to getting out of tight jams; maybe he'd talked his way out of this one and at this very moment was sitting on her living-room couch in his Jockeys, anxiously awaiting her return.
Then she saw him, and her happy ending shattered into a thousand pieces. The police had shaved his head and put him in drab prison garb. Her eyes burned with tears. It didn't take much to get her blubbering, and when she did, she usually got livid. This time, her anger was directed at the government. We're a nation founded by immigrants, she thought. What gives us the right to deport someone for trying to feed his family?
A cargo plane appeared on the tarmac and taxied toward the bus. Nola glanced at her watch: 7:15, just like the message on her e-mail said. Thank you, Frank Fontaine, whoever you are.
Nola saw Raul say something to the Immigration officer in charge. The officer laughed, his broad chest heaving up and down. A cigarette was produced, put in Raul's mouth, and lit. Nola wiped at her eyes. What a charmer.
Movable stairs were rolled up against the cargo plane, and the prisoners went up them. At the top of the stairs, Raul stopped and let the cigarette fall from his lips. He crushed it out with his shoe, then went inside.
'Good-bye, sweet boy,' Nola whispered.
The cargo plane took off toward the south, the sun's blinding rays balanced on each wing like a dagger. She watched the plane until it was no bigger than a pinprick, the man who had restored her faith in love swallowed up in deep blue sky.
'I love you so much,' she whispered, her lipstick smudging the warm glass. 'We'll be back together soon. I promise, baby. You just take care of yourself. And don't forget me. Please don't do that.'
She was blubbering again. Stuffing the binoculars into her purse, she searched for a tissue.
'Here,' a man's voice said.
Nola jumped a few inches off the ground, then did a full one-eighty. She had an audience.
It was Lieutenant Longo and four uniformed officers, plus Sammy Mann and Wily and an older Italian guy with salt-and-pepper hair and an interesting face. A gawking crowd had assembled behind them. Nola took the Kleenex from Longo's outstretched hand and blew her nose, her eyes never leaving the lieutenant's face.
'Planning to take a little trip?' Longo inquired.
'You see any luggage?' Nola asked. She opened her purse for everyone to see. 'Or a ticket?'
'I'm taking you in,' Longo informed her. 'Let's go.'
'Taking me in? For what?'
'The charge is fleeing prosecution,' he said, unsnapping a pair of nickel-plated cuffs from his belt. 'Put out your hands.'
Nola stepped back, her shoulders pressing the glass. 'I can't come to the goddamned airport and see my boyfriend be deported? What kind of inhumane assholes are you?'
'Give me your hands,' the lieutenant demanded.
'I wasn't going anywhere,' she protested, playing to the growing crowd. 'You're throwing my boyfriend out of the country and now you're persecuting me. Leave me alone.'
Longo wagged a finger inches from her face. 'Now, you listen to me. You can walk out of here like a little lady or you can be dragged out like a raving bitch.'
'You mean I have a choice?'
'You sure do.'
'I'll take raving bitch,' Nola said.
From her purse, Nola produced a can of pepper spray. She doused Longo, then dug her knee into his groin and bent the detective in half. Someone screamed, and the crowd showed its colors by heading for the exit.
Thirty seconds and three downed officers later, Nola found herself kissing the carpet, the older Italian guy having used a clever judo move to wrestle the pepper spray from her grasp, then kicked her legs out from under her and taken her down. Her pal Wily, whom she'd nailed right between the eyes, was being restrained by one of Longo's men as he attempted to kick her in the head.
Nola stuck her tongue out at him.
Felix Underman was jumping up and down, his movements as animated as a puppet on a string. His voice was loud, his protests extreme. He flew about the courtroom in a rage and shook his fists. The judge listened to his diatribe with a pained expression on his face. His name was Harold Burke, and normally he did not put up with nonsense in his courtroom. Only this was Felix Underman, his friend, so he did not tell the bailiff to toss him.
Judge Burke was pushing seventy and had known Underman most of his adult life. In their youth, they'd played handball together and gone to basketball games. They also shared a passion for the sweet science, often sitting together at prizefights. They respected each other, or so Burke thought.
'Your honor, never in my forty-five years as an attorney have I had a client's rights violated as Nola Briggs's rights were violated this morning at McCarran Airport,' Underman proclaimed, waving his arms indignantly.
'She was violating the conditions of her bail,' Longo interjected, standing motionless before the bench, his bloodshot eyes still smarting from being sprayed.
'My client was seeing her boyfriend deported,' Underman insisted. 'She had no luggage, no ticket, not even a credit card. All she had was sixty dollars and a lipstick on her person. Yet the police acted like gestapos when they arrested her.'
Burke's face grew taut. Gestapos? This was not like Felix at all. To Longo he said, 'There was an altercation?'
'The suspect pepper-sprayed me and my men,' Longo explained. 'We had to restrain her in self- defense.'
'They broke her wrist and blackened her eye,' Underman bellowed for all he was worth. 'It was eight against one.'
Burke thumbed through the arrest report. To Longo he said, 'Does the suspect have a violent history?'
