November Road
‘A great read, combining brutal action with a moving love story; gorgeous writing, too’ Ian RankinSet against the assassination of JFK, a poignant and evocative crime novel – a story of unexpected connections, daring possibilities, and the hope of second chances from the Edgar Award-winning author of The Long and Faraway Gone.Frank Guidry’s luck has finally run out…A loyal street lieutenant to New Orleans’ mob boss Carlos Marcello, Guidry knows too much about the crime of the century: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.Within hours of JFK’s murder, everyone with ties to Marcello is turning up dead. Suspecting he’s next, Guidry hits the road to Las Vegas. When he spots a beautiful housewife and her two young daughters stranded on the side of the road, he sees the perfect disguise to cover his tracks from the hit men on his trail.The two strangers share the open road west – and find each other on the way. But Guidry’s relentless hunters are closing in on him, and now he doesn’t want to just survive, he wants to really live, maybe for the first time.Everyone’s expendable, or they should be, but Guidry just can’t throw away the woman he’s come to love. And it might get them both killed.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
First published in the United States by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Lou Berney 2018
Lou Berney asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018
Cover photographs © Rae Russel/Getty Images (front), Shutterstock.com (back)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. Any references to real people, living or dead, real events, businesses, organizations and localities are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. All names, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and their resemblance, if any, to real-life counterparts is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008309329
Ebook Edition © October 2018 ISBN: 9780008309367
Version: 2018-08-29
For Adam, Jake, and Sam
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
1963
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
2003
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Read on for an exclusive Q&A …
About the Author
Also by Lou Berney
About the Publisher
Behold! The Big Easy in all its wicked splendor!
Frank Guidry paused at the corner of Toulouse to bask in the neon furnace glow. He’d lived in New Orleans the better part of his thirty-seven years on earth, but the dirty glitter and sizzle of the French Quarter still hit his bloodstream like a drug. Yokels and locals, muggers and hustlers, fire-eaters and magicians. A go-go girl was draped over the wrought-iron rail of a second-floor balcony, one boob sprung free from her sequined negligee and swaying like a metronome to the beat of the jazz trio inside. Bass, drums, piano, tearing through “Night and Day.” But that was New Orleans for you. Even the worst band in the crummiest clip joint in the city could swing, man, swing.
A guy came whipping up the street, screaming bloody murder. Hot on his heels—a woman waving a butcher knife, screaming, too.
Guidry soft-shoed out of their way. The beat cop on the corner yawned. The juggler outside the 500 Club didn’t drop a ball. Just another Wednesday night on Bourbon Street.
“Come on, fellas!” The go-go girl on the balcony wagged her boob at a pair of drunken sailors. They stood swaying on the curb, watching their pal puke into the gutter. “Be a gent and buy a lady a drink!”
The sailors leered up at her. “How much?”
“How much you got?”
Guidry smiled. And so the world spins round. The go-go girl had black velvet kitten ears pinned to her bouffant and false eyelashes so long that Guidry didn’t know how she could see through them. Maybe that was the point.
He turned onto Bienville, easing through the crowd. He wore a gray-on-gray nailhead suit the color of wet asphalt, cut from a lightweight wool-silk blend that his tailor ordered in special from Italy. White shirt, crimson tie. No hat. If the president of the United States didn’t need a hat, then neither did Guidry.
A right on Royal. The bellhop at the Monteleone scrambled to open the door for him. “How’s tricks, Mr. Guidry?”
“Well, Tommy, I’ll tell you,” Guidry said. “I’m too old to learn any new ones, but the old ones still work just fine.”
The Carousel Bar was popping, as usual. Guidry said hello hello hello how’re you how’re you as he worked his way across the room. He shook hands and slapped backs and asked Fat Phil Lorenzo if he’d eaten dinner or just the waiter who brought it. That got a laugh. One of the boys who worked for Sam Saia hooked an arm around Guidry’s neck and whispered in his ear.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Then talk we shall,” Guidry said.
