by Mary Madison
“Isn't that the idea?” she asked. “People see him guarding us, so they don't try anything?”
“Ordinarily, I'd agree,” I mused slowly. “Except that this time, we need to know a lot more about who's behind all this. We need to draw them out, take them alive if possible so we can get another crack at questioning them—us this time, not Junior, so we can find out what's really going on. We won't be able to do anything like that with him out there.”
“I guess you're right.” She still sounded uncertain. “So, what are you going to do?”
“I'm going to go out there and tell him to come inside. If he's going to stand watch over us, he may as well make himself a bit more comfortable.” I paused, then added, “You, um, might want to get dressed before I invite him in.”
Chelsea laughed, grabbing her clothes and putting them back on.
I did likewise, thinking about Junior as I stepped into my trousers and hitched them up. Maybe he had sent Whitey as a kind of apology for the way he'd acted earlier, but if so, it would be the first apology he'd ever made to me after blowing his top. Usually, he was the sort of person who refused to say he was sorry, even when he knew he was in the wrong. Instead, he'd just sulk and scowl and mumble and wait for it all to blow over so he could pretend nothing had happened. Everyone in the family had long since gotten used to this behavior from him, myself included.
Could it have been Peter who sent Whitey, acting without Junior's knowledge? That seemed a bit more likely—Peter may have generally taken Junior's side—even against me—but he didn't have the same level of vitriol for me that our older brother did.
Then again, how probable was it that Peter would do anything without Junior's permission? Especially something as significant as offer protection to someone Junior had shunned, or deploy Whitey, their number one hitman, to carry out the task?
I didn't know, and ultimately, I supposed it didn't really matter. I was clearly overthinking this whole thing. Whoever had sent Whitey to look after us, I'd find out soon enough. At that moment, I was mostly just grateful to have him there. He was one hell of a tough customer, a living stone wall. And the way I saw it, our chances of making it through this whole nightmare alive had dramatically increased as soon as he had shown up.
As I shrugged on my shirt, I thought about the gun that was resting in one of the kitchen drawers. I briefly considered picking it up and bringing it with me, then decided against it. I'd only be outside for a minute or two, and in the unlikely event that a firefight broke out during that time, chances were I'd only end up getting in Whitey's way; he knew his way around a gun a lot better than I did, and—loyal enforcer that he was—he'd probably have told me to find cover anyway while he was blasting it out with the bad guys.
So I left the gun, buttoned up my shirt, and headed out the door into the chill of the Chicago night. My breath plumed out of my mouth in white clouds as I strode over to Whitey, rubbing my hands together briskly.
Hilariously, there were a few seconds when it looked like Whitey was prepared to pretend he didn't see me—that we were about to “bump into each other” wholly by coincidence. But when he looked at my face and saw that the game was up, his huge shoulders slumped in defeat, and he waddled over to meet me.
“Whitey!” I greeted him warmly. “You undercover out here as a garbage truck, or what?”
He chortled. “Yeah, I guess blending in isn't really my strong suit, is it?”
“I'll say. Junior sent you, huh? Or was it Peter?”
“Um, both of them, I guess,” he answered sheepishly. “I know you guys are kind of on the outs right now, but hey, you're still family, and that still counts for a lot. They wanted to make sure nothing bad happened to you. Chelsea, too. Is she in there with you?”
“Sure thing,” I replied. “I wasn't going to leave her alone for a moment, not with all this shit that's going on. But I'm glad you're here, man. Now we can sleep in shifts, and I can finally get some damn rest. Feels like I haven't gotten any shuteye in days. Hell, I guess I haven't.”
Whitey's brow furrowed with concern. “Jesus, dude. You should catch some Zs before you start hallucinating. You ain't gonna be no good to no one if you're too tired to think straight, you know?”
“You've got that right.” I clapped him on the shoulder, smiling. “Come on in, okay? If you're going to be guarding us, you may as well watch some TV, put your feet up, and get warm, right? I'll brew a pot of coffee for you so you can be nice and alert in case the Azzarellos show up.”
Whitey gave me a beatific grin. “Thanks, Desmond. I really appreciate that. You always were a stand-up guy.”
I nodded, turning to head back to the apartment. I could hear his heavy footsteps plodding along behind me, and I felt tremendously comforted by the sound. It had been so painful earlier, thinking that my own brothers had decided to cut me out of their lives completely—that all those times we'd shared, all those memories, had meant so little to them compared to their idiotic vendetta against the Azzarellos.
Yes, they were behaving recklessly, and innocent people had gotten hurt because of their foolish gang war. But maybe it wasn't too late to make them see reason. Maybe I could help them put an end to this conflict before it got even more out of hand. Maybe I could even persuade Junior to let me go through with the Stavros deal after all... if it weren’t too late, of course.
We may fight sometimes, I told myself, but at the end of the day, family is family. And that's a bond that's stronger than anything.
I opened the door, smiling at Chelsea. “Hey, Chels, the cavalry's here! I'm going to make some coffee; do you want any? Or did you just want to see if we can catch a few hours of sleep?”
I was expecting Chelsea to look happy, relieved that reinforcements had come. But instead, when she looked in my direction, her eyes widened to the size of dinner plates and her jaw dropped in horror. “Desmond!”
Before I could ask what was wrong, I heard a loud, sharp, choppy thunk behind me... like a car door slamming or a helicopter blade rotating. There was a strange pressure on the right side of my back, as though someone had pushed me.
Are the Azzarellos here? I thought wildly. Did they start shooting? Did Whitey try to push me out of the way so he could return fire?
Then I noticed that the area around my abdomen suddenly felt warm and wet.
I looked down at my torso and saw a red patch spreading across an area of my midsection. Its size was increasing rapidly, and there was a ragged hole in my shirt right in the middle of it. As the red stuff oozed down my pants leg, I finally understood what I was looking at.
Blood.
My blood.
I had been shot in the back.
I was dimly aware that Chelsea had started screaming as I slowly spun around, feeling dizzy and light-headed. Whitey was holding a pistol with a silencer attachment, and there was a sad expression on his wide, round face. There was white smoke rising from the barrel of his gun, and for a bizarre moment, it reminded me of the way my breath had looked when we were outside in the cold. But guns couldn't breathe, could they? No, that was silly.
That might have been one of the last breaths I ever get to take, I thought, dazed. And I didn't even know it. Somehow, that doesn't seem fair.
Whitey had put a bullet through me. I tried to process this concept, but it was impossible, surreal, absurd, like trying to imagine fitting a horse into a whiskey bottle.
“Sorry about this, Desmond,” Whitey said. “You really were a stand-up guy, and I'm sorry things had to work out this way. But orders are orders, man. You understand.”
Orders? I couldn't understand what I was hearing. What orders? From whom? Did the Azzarellos get to Whitey? Or was it someone else... the real culprit behind Dad's death and the attack on Chels?
I reached for these concepts, trying to make sense of them—but they danced just out of reach, rising higher and higher, mocking me as I sank to the floor and fell face-down.
My blood was pouring out of my b
ody. I put my hands over the wound, trying to keep it all in, but it just kept oozing through my fingers and staining the carpet beneath me.
This isn't really happening, I told myself. I fell asleep on the couch with Chels, and this is some kind of bad dream I'm having. Soon I'll wake up, and I'll tell her all about it, and she'll hold me and comfort me, and we'll talk some more, and we'll figure out what to do next. This can't be the way things end. Jesus, it can't.
Can it?
Chapter Five
Chapter Five—Chelsea
As Whitey raised his gun in my direction, I stumbled backward onto my butt, crab-walking, skittering to get to safety. He pulled the trigger again, and I rolled to the side instinctively, my heart leaping into my throat as the bullet hit the floor where I'd just been.
“This ain't anything personal, Chelsea,” Whitey explained in a reasonable tone, lumbering after me. “It's just a thing that's gotta be done, is all. Ain't no use making things more difficult than they need to be, understand? So stop screwing around, stand up, and let's get this over with. It won't hurt, and it'll be over in just a second, I promise.”
The calm, rational, apologetic way he was talking to me threatened to break my mind in half as I scooted myself into the kitchen and took cover behind the counter. I had seen Desmond bring his gun into this room, I knew he had stowed it away somewhere... but where? I needed to find it fast, before the hulking brute closed the distance between us.
I opened a cabinet and found a jumble of pots and pans. Desperate, I grabbed an armload and risked raising my head above the counter long enough to throw them at him one at a time.
A big pot hit his head, bouncing off. A smaller one thumped against his broad chest, clattering to the floor. I found a cast-iron skillet and lobbed it at him as hard as I could, grunting at the weight. It came in low, hitting him in his prodigious stomach and dropping with a heavy thud.
He just kept coming. I may as well have been tossing handfuls of feathers at him.
“Come on, don't do this, please?” Now his tone was oddly plaintive, like a child who didn't want to be sent to bed. “It's pointless, it's a waste of time, and frankly, it's embarrassing to both of us. Stop being silly, stand up, and take your medicine like a good girl.”
Had he really just said that? Jesus, what the hell was with this guy? What a creepy asshole! I couldn't believe I had spent hours playing cards with him and laughing at his jokes just a few days before.
As I ducked again, I heard him fire the gun and felt the impact of the bullet as it went through the cheap wooden facade of the counter and pinged against one of the metal cooking implements in the cabinets.
Thank God—otherwise, it probably would have traveled straight through and hit me.
Where's the goddamn gun? my mind jabbered senselessly. Find the gun, Chelsea, find the fucking gun now before he kills you...!
I snuck a glance over at the living room, and my blood turned to icicles in my veins. Desmond was still face-down. He wasn't moving. And the crimson pool beneath him was steadily growing larger.
He can't be dead; he can't, not when we just found our way back into each other's lives. He has to be alive. I have to make sure he's alive, but first, I need to kill this motherfucking giant, so I'd better find that gun somewhere around here or at least a fucking slingshot, or I won't have a chance in hell.
I yanked open another drawer, so hard that it came all the way out of its slot and spilled its contents all over the linoleum floor.
Knives.
Lots of knives.
Not a gun, perhaps, but still better than nothing.
I grabbed the biggest one I could find and rose again, unprepared for how close Whitey had gotten since the last time I had raised my head. He may have been slow, but he was also relentless, like some slasher from a horror movie. I tossed the large knife at him, and it hit the fleshy mass of his upper left arm, the blade sinking in deep.
I felt a moment of delirious triumph, which immediately turned to ash as he peered down at the knife sticking out of him, looking more annoyed than injured. “Hey, that fucking hurt! What the hell did you go and do that for, huh?”
He raised his gun, and at this distance, there was absolutely no way he was going to miss. I braced myself for the impact of the bullet, followed by death, and whatever mysteries awaited me after that. Just like in the hotel a week before, I was filled with the certainty of my own demise—that, as bizarre and improbable as it seemed, those moments would be the last I'd ever experience.
Then there was a primal roar from behind Whitey, and the living room chair came down in an arc, smashing itself over his dome-like head. He lowered the gun again, wincing at the blow and turning to see where it had come from.
He didn't even have a chance to complete his slow rotation before Desmond was on him like a demented, blood-soaked whirlwind... howling, kicking, punching.
“Stop it, dude!” Again, Whitey sounded more disgusted than hurt. “You're getting blood all over me! It's gross!” He swung his gargantuan arm like a wrecking ball, knocking Desmond off his feet and sending him into the coffee table. It splintered under him, and Whitey turned his attention to me again.
As he started toward me, he looked down, puzzled, and noticed that the knife was still in his arm. A small, enigmatic smile played across his lips as he pulled it out and dropped it onto the floor, as though he were plucking off a mosquito. “There, that's better. Jeez, lady, you really are more trouble than you're worth, aren't you?”
I realized that instead of watching him brawl with Desmond, I should have been rummaging for the gun. Now my time had run out. If the weapon weren't in the very next drawer I opened, he'd shoot me dead for sure.
I pulled the drawer out, offering up a silent prayer to whoever would hear it.
Sure enough, the gun was right there, waiting for me.
Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Buddha. Thank you, Krishna. Thank you, whoever. Thank you, thank you, thank you...!
I whipped it out, pointed it at him, and pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
Whitey raised his gun for what I was sure would be the final time. I dropped to the floor again, looking for the safety catch on the side of the gun—easier said than done, since I'd never even held a gun before, let alone flipped the safety on it.
It's a gun, goddammit, how many fucking switches could there be?
Only one, as it turned out.
I clicked it into place, took a deep breath, and lunged to my feet. Whitey was practically inches away now, the gun was level at my chest, and I knew I'd only get one chance to out-shoot him before he blew me away effortlessly.
I pulled the trigger over and over, the sound of the gunshots smacking against my ears like fists and splitting my skull from the inside. One bullet, two, three, four, five in his gigantic body, and he still barely seemed to feel it. He reeled a little, and his aim was thrown off, but it still didn't look like he was in danger of going down.
“Knock it off, will you?” He sounded stern now, like a parent snapping at an unruly kid. “I told you, you're only making this harder than it needs to be!”
Head shot, my brain babbled furiously. Shooting his body is stupid, he's a whale, he's got layers of blubber to soak up the bullets, so shoot him in the head, moron, the head...!
I raised the gun higher and squeezed the trigger again. But I'd never fired a gun before that night. My aim was not good, and instead of blowing his face off, the bullet only hit his ear, taking half of it off. His face turned bright red and contorted into an animalistic snarl.
“I said stop fucking hurting me, you ugly bitch!” he roared, aiming the gun at me one last time.
At least I got to be with Desmond one last time before dying, I thought, preparing for the end. If nothing else, at least there's that.
Suddenly, Whitey's eyes bulged comically, like a bullfrog's. His body began to jitter and dance, his rolls of fat jiggling obscenely under his clothes. His teeth chattered, and his arms a
nd legs bucked and spasmed. His finger clamped down on the trigger of his firearm, and the shots went wild, hitting the walls harmlessly until the gun emitted a series of empty clicks.
I stared at him, confused. What the hell was this weirdo up to now? Some kind of bizarre victory dance before he delivered the killing shot? It would have been no stranger than the rest of his behavior that night, it seemed.
Then his tongue lolled out, he let out a long gurgle... and he flopped down on his stomach like a beached orca, dead.
Desmond had grabbed a lamp from a side table, whipped off the shade, and jammed the bulb into the small of Whitey's back (if any part of that behemoth's body could be referred to as “small”), electrocuting him.
Christ, killing that man had been like trying to put down Rasputin!
Before I could say anything, Desmond gave me a brief smile—and then sank to the floor, his eyelids fluttering.
“Desmond!” I ran to him, stepped around Whitey's Brobdingnagian corpse. The hole in Desmond's midsection looked impossibly large to me, and tears filled my eyes, causing my vision to double and triple.
“Is... he... dead?” Desmond slurred, looking up with unfocused eyes.
“Yes, he's dead, we're okay, everything's okay, but we need to get you to a hospital right away,” I yammered. “You've lost a lot of blood, but you're going to be fine just as soon as the ambulance gets here...”
He shook his head weakly. “No. No... hospital. No ambulance.”
“What?” I couldn't believe my ears. “Desmond, we don't have a choice! I have to call 9-1-1!”
I got up to grab my cell phone and make the call, but his hand shot out, clamping around my wrist and stopping me.
“No.” Despite the pain and the blood loss, he was still strong, and his tone was surprisingly firm. “I mean it, Chels. We can't do that.”
“But you'll die!” My mind refused to accept what he was saying. There was no way for me to process the concept that we had somehow survived Whitey's King Kong-like onslaught just so Desmond could bleed out senselessly in his own living room, stubbornly refusing medical attention.
