by Brian Ewing
A few gasps from the crowd came, Sisto still focused on a spot on the ground.
“My best friend, hell, probably my only real friend, was killed the other day. I feel like it’s my fault. I can’t say too much, but I just wanted to express how I am feeling and for anyone that is religious, try to send a prayer to my friend Craig Allman tonight.”
Looking up, the crowd was definitely more morose than when they got there. Nice work, Sisto. The next half hour had some of the others explaining how they had endured some struggles since their last session and how they coped or were unable to cope, asking for advice for future situations. Most of the time, the circle was a cohesive set of people, happy to get each other’s backs. It was one of the things that kept drawing Sisto back to C.O.S. As Tara started to share her weekend of mischief, in the corner of his peripheral vision, he saw the entrance door open, Laura was walking in with a few plastic bags. She headed into the office and disappeared a few minutes, then came out to join the group. She was in skintight capri jeans, with a tank top that was modestly covering her ample breasts, and an open sweater coat to finalize her professional, yet sexy style. She apologized for her tardiness and let Sisto continue to run the rest of the session. As time ended, Laura thanked everyone for coming and told them she had something exciting to share in the coming weeks.
Being the last session, Sisto ritualistically helped break down the folding chairs and snack table with Laura.
“Something exciting going on?” Sisto asked, in reference to her final statement to the group.
“So, you know how alcoholics and narcotics centers give out chips for sobriety?” Laura asked, already knowing he had.
“Yes.”
“Well, I thought if we started doing that here, it would do a few things. It would, first of all, make people feel better for their consistent efforts of trying to grieve and process and get past the darkness in their lives.”
“That is a great idea. Never thought about it, but I like it,” Sisto said approvingly. “You said first of all. Is there a second of all?”
“Second of all,” she continued, “I have been reading different books about business and I think, subliminally, if someone gets a one-year chip, it will make them want to get a two-year chip. Two-year chip, three-year chip. It will help people maintain their support of this place. Things are going really well, and if I can keep this going, more investors and grants can get approved.”
“I am so happy you are driving this place in the direction you are,” Sisto acknowledged. “I am really proud of you.”
She looked up, a smile with a hint of sadness across her face. “Thank you.”
They finished putting everything away and went to the office. They chatted while Laura noted something in her workbook, then made out some checks to vendors that would be showing up the next day. She kept a bottle of Jameson in the top left drawer of the office with a few lowball glasses. She pulled them out and asked Sisto if he would have a drink with her to celebrate. Looking at his phone, he noted that it was barely after seven. He accepted and the two raised their glasses to each other and gulped down shots. She refilled the glasses and they caught up on each other’s lives. It had been a while since Sisto and Laura had just sat and talked after closing up or headed to the bar for a drink. They had been friends, before and after their night of explicit acts, but work had started pulling them both in separate directions of late.
“So, the consulting is full-time and its going pretty well it seems?” Laura asked with genuine interest.
“It is. It’s been a hell of a week, but most cases are fulfilling to assist on and the pay is alright.”
“Are you on a case right now?” Laura asked.
“I am. You were gone the first half of the session. I have been working on a case and it’s been a rough one, but I think I am getting close.”
“That’s good. You think you will have any time after you wrap that up, to grab a drink outside of these walls?” Laura proposed.
“I was just thinking we haven’t hung out in a long time. Poker night at Flashy Jack’s!”
“You are a terrible poker player, Tom,” Laura laughed.
“Almost as bad as you are at darts,” Sisto retorted.
They laughed and Sisto was happy that things were going right in his life. He again reiterated how proud he was of Laura and thanked her for being there for him.
“Look, I actually got to go. Are you ready to head out? I can walk you to your car.”
“No, its fine. I have a little more paperwork I have to take care of. I have my mace. I will be okay, thanks though.”
“No problem,” Sisto replied as he stood up.
Laura stood up too and walked Sisto out the office to lock the door after he exited. Sisto gave her a big hug, telling her he would be back in a week or so, and while pulling away, he felt her resist a moment. He recognized a fire in her dark-chocolate eyes, thinking of the proverb of how when it rains it pours. Before he could react, she pressed her sultry lips to his and passionately kissed him. The intensity was draining all thought from his mind, giving Sisto’s other head precedence over decisions. As his dick was trying to start a mutiny, he pulled away and grabbed Laura by the shoulders.
“Whoa, whoa, Laura,” Sisto started. “I can’t. I am, I am kind of seeing someone right now.”
Biting her lower lip, looking like she wanted to rip his clothes off right there, Laura asked, “Is it serious? Because if it’s not, we can just keep this casual, like before?”
Tempting as it was, Sisto knew that it couldn’t be further from the truth. He knew when they had decided to not pursue a relationship years ago, she had agreed reluctantly. She’d tried to hide it, but Sisto assumed over time she had gotten over it. They were in a good place and he didn’t want to ruin it with either her or his budding relationship with Caden.
“I don’t know if it’s serious, but I do know that you don’t deserve to be anyone’s casual fling. I love being around you and the moments we have had have been amazing, all of them. I don’t want you to feel like you are on the backburner. I am attracted to you and think you are the catch of a lifetime. I just think, it’s the wrong time.”
The passion subsiding from her eyes, it took a moment for her to process his reasoning. She tilted her head, as if she had just comprehended some new information.
“Thank you, Tom,” Laura said. “You are an amazing man. Your new friend is lucky to have you. If she doesn’t treat you right, and if I am not off the market at that time . . .”
“Oh, you bet it’s on.” He cut her off.
They laughed and embraced in a hug once more as friends, then he opened the door to leave C.O.S. and waited for the click of the deadbolt behind him.
Sighing at how unbelievably complicated his corner of the world had become, he walked to the bus stop and waited to head back to Corden Palisades.
CHAPTER 27
The vibration from Sisto’s phone felt magnified against his stomach through his hoodie pocket as he got off the bus. It broke his daydream of his first-world problem between Caden and Laura Saunders, fantasizing about the two women he’d just kissed within twenty-four hours of one another, going head to head in a joust like American Gladiators. Sisto realized he’d just accidentally stumbled on the next great reality show. Forget giving roses to women on an island. Pit two people, both pining for the same stranger’s affection, and let them run through the gauntlet of foam doom. The screen showed an unknown caller, as Sisto brought his focus to the present. Caden had already confirmed that she would be at his place by eight and Ama knew he had plans. He’d just left Laura, Bell never called him, and Craig was unfortunately no longer able to make phone calls. The odds of a random person mistakenly calling him after the weekend he’d incurred, were slim to none. He slid the icon to answer, putting the phone to his ear with slight reservation.
“Hello?”
The man didn’t answer immediately, taking a moment to breathe in the uncertainty in Sisto�
��s voice, before finally answering in a raspy voice, “This call is long overdue, Thomas Sisto.”
The hairs on his forearm rose as he heard the joy in the stranger’s heckling tone.
“Carson Vinnova,” Sisto finally replied.
“Oh,” Carson came back with mock admiration. “It must be true what they say about you—‘The Psychic Savior of Saratoga City!’”
Carson’s fit of cackling at his own taunt startled Sisto. He had quoted the article title Max Halstead had written the year before. Sisto gripped the phone a little harder.
“Why all of this? Why the game? Why not just walk up behind me and put a bullet in my head?”
“You don’t deserve that. You deserve a long-drawn-out symphony of pain, my friend.”
“You are not my friend.”
“That’s right, I took your only friend, and I carved him up like something Aguilar would sell at his Spic butcher shop.”
“I did nothing to you.”
Enraged at the audacity, Carson shot back, not in a full scream, but a full octave higher than his previous tone.
“Don’t you do that! Do not! You don’t get to wipe the blame away. You helped put away my father, my best friend, hand-delivering him to his death!”
Carson’s words provided the fuel for anger, prompting Sisto’s aggression in his reply. “I took everything from you? Your father had his hand in every dirty pair of panties in this town! Your father, pussy he was, sent his lackeys to hunt down and murder my family. He didn’t even have the fucking balls to do it himself. Your father got everything he deserved!”
“Watch it!” Carson warned, sounding like there was legitimacy behind the threat. “Don’t get nasty and talk about my father like that. He loved me and he was a good man, deep down. Do you even know what he went through in prison?”
Sisto could not have cared less for Frank Vinnova’s living conditions during that time, however he had a feeling that Carson would paint the dreary picture for him regardless.
“My father, connected as he was, had more enemies than he could count at federal lockup. He was in solitary within his first two hours as the Arians had one of their fag boys grab his balls on the way to roll call. What was my father supposed to do, just take it? He socked that fairy fuck in the mouth and was beaten by the lieutenants of white power, knocking out four of his teeth. His first two hours!”
“I’m sure he ended up with a smile only a mother could love.”
“That was only the first instance,” Carson continued. “He was killed within a month after sentencing. He was deprived of food, beaten, threatened, and taunted every single day, provoking him to getting thrown in the hole. I have been to the hole and you know what? It is not a nice place. Surely not a nice place to die.”
Carson’s twisted justifications just made Sisto more annoyed. “Maybe Frank should have taken up gardening and become a florist instead of trying to rise up on the FBI’s most wanted list?”
Almost as if he hadn’t even heard Sisto’s smartass reply, Carson continued without missing a beat, “The last time I saw my father he had a busted lip and swollen eye and his hand was in a cast. He told me he fought some guys trying to attack a fellow inmate. You know what I found out really happened, after overhearing my Uncle Jackie a week later? Some big, fuckin’ niggers paid the C.O. to take a walk at shower time and raped my father. They humiliated him and treated him like a bitch, and that, my friend, is all your fault! Do not attempt to deny it. You caused all of this mess. All the pain you are about to endure is actually self-inflicted.”
“Well, that’s just racist,” Sisto said, referring to Carson’s loose use of spic, fag boy, fairy fuck, and niggers, all in one conversation. “Sounds like this is drudging up some bad memories for you, Carson? You went in the pen when you were, what? Nineteen? I bet those lifers loved seeing your fresh meat visiting for those few years. How many times did you get turned out per night?”
More enraged at speaking about his father than speaking to his possible traumatic prison rape memories, Carson unexpectedly laughed through the phone. Sisto pulled the phone away in unreasonable hope, looking at it as if it would give him clarification to the unwarranted hearty laugh, then put it back to his ear.
“One hour, Halbrook Power Plant,” Carson instructed.
Not used to hearing Chemistry Cove referred to by its proper name of Halbrook, Sisto had to take a moment to register where Carson had been referring to.
“The earliest bus to Chemistry Cove isn’t until nine, then it will take another forty-five minutes at least to get there with all the stops. There’s no way I will be there in an hour,” Sisto replied, trying to buy some time.
“Thomas, I may not be book smart, but I am smart enough to keep myself surrounded around people that are. I know you got a Honda registered to you. One hour. No cops or I will execute someone else near and dear to you.”
Wondering who and how he would pull that off, Sisto realized that the threat stemmed from the same confidence that he’d held through the entire conversation. The unknown element to Sisto was how Carson had pulled everything off and he realized it had to have been his partner.
“Seems a little lopsided, don’t you think? I come alone and you and your uncle get to gang up on me?”
Another hoarse laugh bellied out on the other end of the line.
“One hour or you will be sorry.”
Many questions flooded his mind, the one in the forefront being if he still remembered how to drive. Sisto walked past the entrance to the Corden Palisades, to the gated entrance for resident vehicles. He entered his personalized code, 0512, Corey’s birthday, and walked up to his recently-cleaned relic of a car. Pulling out his key ring, he sifted through his mail key, apartment key, C.O.S. key, storage unit key, and his trusty car key. No key fab or built-in auto unlock tool, he put his key in the door and unlocked it and sat in the driver’s seat. He started the car nervously and reminded himself that it was just like riding a bike. You never really forget. The music from his mixed CD he’d created from almost a decade ago started to play. He looked at the CD player box leaning out of the dash, supported by two energy drink cans after its plastic chassis broke, and shook his head. Sisto tried to remember the person he had been at the time he was hand-selecting the songs and sadly came to the realization that Tom Sisto was long gone; he had died that night with Eddie, Kat, and Corey. Kicking on the headlights, he had a ball of nerves brewing in the pit of his stomach but put the vehicle in drive and waited for the automated gate to re-open from the sensor he had driven over.
By the time he got onto the I-83 towards Chemistry Cove, he felt his rhythm coming back to him. He drove slightly above the speed limit, not because he was afraid of a ticket, but because getting pulled over would cause him to be late. He pushed the boundaries as he bobbed and weaved between the light night traffic, finally seeing the Washington Street exit. He had to think of a game plan to avoid getting hurt, or possibly killed. An image of Carson Vinnova’s physical structure popped up in his mind, reminding him that a hand-to-hand combat would surely be against Sisto’s favor. Sisto also owned no weapons and nothing in his car could be used in its place besides maybe a tire iron in the trunk. Regardless, Sisto felt that Vinnova would be watching when he arrived and decided to pull over at the carnicería to check for any makeshift tool to possibly hide under his hoodie.
There was limited time to spare when he reached the same backlot where the two power plant workers had stumbled upon the murdered Aguilar. Sisto looked at the time on his car clock and swore to himself. He texted Caden, explaining that he was so sorry but had to follow up on a lead and would let her know what happened once he was done. He threw his phone in his pocket, not waiting for a reply, and popped the trunk. He was desperate to find a makeshift weapon, as he didn’t have time to prepare for the confrontation. There had been no tire iron in the trunk of his car like he’d hoped, but there was a crowbar. Not a clue as to why it was in there, as Sisto had probably not check
ed the trunk in years, he decided it was a better and more agile weapon anyhow. He put it in the front seat with him, sped out of the backlot of the butcher shop, the resting place of Fernando Aguilar, and made his way up towards the tongue-and-cheek named Isotope Lane, which led Sisto down a path of a few hundred feet before seeing the sign indicating the power plant was near, through his headlights. The waves of rotten egg smell became more potent with every yard he closed in on and he saw the check-in gate up ahead. Wondering how Carson had managed to get past it and how he had expected Sisto to do the same, Sisto noticed a side road to his left that looked like it had a recently spray-painted arrow on the bark of a massive tree stump at the crossroad. He thought about disregarding it until he got closer to it and saw a triangle painted above the arrow. The human tee-pee, Sisto thought. Slowing down at the last second, his tires skid slightly but recovered as he took the dirt pathway. It went about two hundred feet, then opened to what looked like a junkyard filled with not trash, but parts of old industrial machines. Sisto saw this area was also gated, but had been propped open, seemingly for his arrival. Proceeding through slowly, Sisto noticed loose chains hanging from the center of each side of the aluminum gate doors. Sisto would be sure to advise Caden and Bell to tack on breaking and entering to the list of charges Carson would face after all was said and done.
Leaving his headlights on to give him a better view, he slipped the crowbar up the bottom of his hoodie until it lay against his right shoulder bottom, resting at the top of his beltline. He parked and turned on his high beams to try and give him any advantage possible. He made his way out, not confident in the least of what to expect, and noticed there was a campfire flickering right outside a metal shed that had seen better days, fifty feet ahead of the dirt path. With the taste of Italian dressing from his panic, paired with the wafting scent of manufactured grape in the air, he could tell Carson was close. The crisp air stung Sisto’s throat as it became dry from anticipation. He kept looking around in every corner, every shadow, every nook, but was unable to see where Carson Vinnova was perched. He felt the man’s eyes on him and while extra sensory hearing was not something The Reels had ever seemed to be consistent about, he could have sworn he heard the adrenaline-fueled heartbeat of the psychopath nearby.
