by Blue, Jayne
And I was sure he knew who’d pulled the trigger on Frankie and hit Hayden.
I watched on as the crew of Great Wolves got to work, sweaty work, doing what I asked without complaint. Baby Paul found ways to help but stayed quiet.
The rest of the day went fast, and at the end, before they took off for the night, I paid all the members a weeks’ wages.
“Where’s this coming from?” Thorn asked me as I dolled a good amount to each member.
“This is what it means to be in the GWMC. When it’s done, this place will be our income,” I explained, and Thorn shook his head.
“Fucking Crank, he was too stupid to see that,” Thorn said.
“Guess so. And tonight, well, I need you all again. We’re not going to be sleeping much. We’re going to patrol with the neighborhood watch. Hell, we’re going to BE the watch.”
Thorn looked at me and shook his head.
“I would like to see Kase and Mrs. Zbornak on patrol together. Like, I really need to see that!” He laughed and I could see a glimpse into how this crew could come together.
“The crew did a good job today. No one lost their shit. Everyone followed orders.”
“Yeah, we’re not so bad eh?” Thorn said.
“No, not so bad.”
I still missed my Great Wolves Grand City brothers, but there was something here. No one was going to trust us, though, if we didn’t find out who pulled the trigger at Hayden and Frankie.
As we were packing up for the day, I turned to Baby Paul.
“You got a place to go?” I asked him and he shook his head no.
“Where you planning to sleep?”
“I wasn’t, that old hospital maybe.”
“You can stay here. I’ve fixed up an office room. You can be the night security with the crew that’s here tonight? Do what they say?”
“Yeah, okay.”
I handed him twenty bucks.
“What’s this for?”
“You worked today, and I expect you to keep an eye out tonight. I’d give you more but I’m afraid you’d spend it all in one place.”
He knew what I meant by that.
“You know your old crew; they’re going to stir shit up right?” I added.
“Yeah. I didn’t know, you know?” he mumbled.
“What?”
“I didn’t know they was going to shoot at Frankie. I was supposed to lure her, so they could talk to her, tell her she needed to start paying protection. Tell her that she needed to tell the rest of the neighborhood.”
“And then?”
“I got in the car and they started.” He looked truly horrified.
“You know who?”
“Maybe.”
“Then can you say? To the cops?”
“I—they’ll kill me.”
“I’m promising you that I will protect you. They will not get at you. The cops need to know. And they’ll punish people that weren’t even involved, you get me?”
“How can I be sure?”
“You have two choices: be with Crank, and that crew that lie to you, that make you a part of something ugly, or be with us.”
“Will I get in trouble?”
“I’m not a lawyer, but you’re already in trouble. You live on the street, you got nothing. You show me you’re a standup guy, maybe do some time, I’m out here for you. That’s my promise. You can take that to the bank like cash.”
He had no reason to trust me. But I knew every single thing I was telling him was the truth. This kid had a choice to make and what he decided in the next few minutes was probably going to impact his life.
“I don’t know if I can do it, if I can rat on Bane.”
“Bane?”
“That’s what Crank and them call themselves now, Bane or The Bane. I thought it was like a Batman thing.”
I sucked in a deep breath. Or maybe Wolf’s Bane? Crank was one sick asshole. I looked down at Baby Paul. I needed to get him to the police before he lost his nerve.
“Can I think about it?”
“Not too long, the clock is ticking.”
He was skinny, I could see that, and it was easy to see why Frankie was willing to let him steal food, why she worried about him. There was something good in this kid, and I wanted him to let it win out.
If he did get thrown in juvie for his part in the shooting, I’d make sure he was protected.
I’d done this for Steel, and a handful of others back in Grand City. I knew how to get protection going for a brother on the inside.
And if Baby Paul was going to do time—kid time, which sucked but was nothing compared to actual prison—then I’d do what I could to be sure he had a place to land after.
I showed the kid where to bunk and hoped the bit of kindness that we were showing him, that Frankie had given him, would work to turn him in the right direction.
But I was a realist: it probably wouldn’t.
I left the new HQ looking a lot better than when we started with it.
It had been a long day. A hard day, but we’d done good work.
I got on my bike and rolled back to Kaminski’s. I called the brothers: Thorn was going to go on patrol, Brogan was following the two who’d scuttled out of the hospital, ready to give the heads up if they met with Crank, and the rest were finishing up at the building.
My mind was filled with new details that needed handling; this was the life a Prez.
That’s when the force of the blast blew me off my bike. I slid on the pavement and missed hitting my head on the curb by an inch or so.
What the fuck?
But when I looked up, what I saw scared the shit out of me.
The banquet hall next to Frankie’s bar was on fucking fire!
Sixteen
Frankie
The building shook, glassware crashed to the floor. I looked around. Something had exploded, on that I had zero doubt.
“Are you okay Lamont?” I asked and he nodded. “Shut everything down!” I had no idea if it was a gas explosion or what. But I didn’t want to take any chances.
Then I went to the floor. We had about a dozen people inside.
“OUT! We need to get out.”
I opened the door to the front of the restaurant. They all hustled, as fast as their legs could carry them, some being geriatric.
Dziadzia brought up the rear.
“What happened?” he asked me, and it was clear that confusing for someone his age was a whole different thing than the confusion I felt. It broke my heart.
“Come on, Dzia. There was an explosion or something. Let’s get out so we know we’re safe.”
“Are the girls out?”
“Right here!” Terry and Sherry were the last two in the restaurant.
“Lamont, let’s go!” I yelled to the back and didn’t get an answer.
“I’ve got to go get him,” I told Dzia.
“No, you come out with us now. You come out,” he said, and his voice was high pitched, panicked.
“It’s fine, Dzia, we’re fine.”
“Help him please,” I begged Terry and Sherry. Dzia looked so vulnerable and scared in that moment that it broke my heart. But I had to get Lamont.
“Come on old man, you’re holding up the line.” They cajoled him, pushed him and, despite his protests, they got him out onto the street.
I looked around the restaurant. It was empty, so I ran to the kitchen.
“Lamont, we need to—holy shit!” I fell silent as I saw what Lamont was doing.
“The fire is coming from next door. If we don’t get water on this, and keep it on, it’s going to burn the damn restaurant down.”
“I’m going next door.”
“No, you’re crazy. We’ll fight it from here until the firefighters take over.”
“I’m not losing this place. I’ll use the banquet extinguisher, the sink, whatever I can. And you need to get out of here. I can’t lose my best friend—I mean, best cook.”
“Not losing you eith
er! Don’t you dare go out there!”
But it was too late: I was going into the banquet hall to fight the fire, at least until the fire department came, dammit.
“FRANKIE!” Lamont called after me. I looked out the front of the bar. There was no sign of fire trucks yet. I also knew every single person out there would lose it if I ran into the banquet hall.
I decided I could go into the alley and use the back door.
I ran into the ally to the locked door of the hall and touched it. It wasn’t hot. I mean, I think that was what you were supposed to test for, right?
What if I fed the blaze by opening the door and letting air in?
I swallowed hard and took a risk. I opened the door and it was good news—well, as good of news as you could have in the wake of an explosion and a fire.
The fire I saw was small. The whole place wasn’t ablaze. That was good. I could work with that. The bad news was that the adjoining wall was Kaminski’s kitchen, and it was on fire. The building was old, so the wood, the brick—all of it—was dry. I knew there wasn’t much time. I needed to fight as hard as I could until the fire department got here.
I grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall of the hall and started spraying.
I couldn’t tell if I was making a dent in the fire. Maybe I was slowing it down? But, then again, maybe not.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I turned, hoping it was the fire department.
It was Ridge.
“Is this fucking being careful?”
He pulled me back. In his hand he had another extinguisher. I was paranoid, thank God, and had them everywhere in the two structures.
“It’s going to spread to the bar, I have no choice.”
Ridge used the extinguisher until it was empty, as was mine. He ran to the kitchen and a second later he had a bucket. He threw the water on the fire. I swear it was getting smaller. This was working.
Then I heard sounds of the fire department. Sirens. My life was sirens lately!
Maybe the bar stood a chance. This was working.
“But this isn’t your problem. I—”
“Go get me more water.”
He handed me the bucket and I saw him trouble shoot fire with the extinguisher again, white foam sputtering out of the nozzle.
I ran to the kitchen, filled the bucket, and ran out.
“Here.”
Ridge grabbed the bucket and threw it on the wall.
“Honestly, I think it’s out. I think you got lucky,” he said and we both stood back.
“Lucky, yeah, that’s it,” I said as the front door busted down.
The fire department had arrived.
“Get out of here, now!” they ordered us both. I had no doubt they would have knocked us over the head and carried us if need be.
“This was very stupid, Frankie!”
“Stanthree!”
Stanthree’s actual name was Stanley Podbilniak, the Third. But Stanthree was what we all called him. He was a newbie on the fire department but had grown up in the neighborhood, like me.
“It’s my place, I’m not losing it. And hi.”
We walked out, trying not to get in the way of the hoses that were being pulled into the banquet.
I had no real way to assess the damage, but my bar was maybe okay, and the hall, which for a split second seemed like it might be a loss, would maybe survive too.
For a second, for a lot of seconds, I saw what might have been. I’d almost lost everything I’d ever worked for.
And then a sickening sound changed the situation. Something was collapsing. Something was wrong!
“GET OUT!” I heard Stanthree’s voice.
“The roof isn’t stable, the fire’s in the ceiling.”
I panicked.
Lamont, shit.
“LAMONT!”
Ridge looked at me and I looked at the restaurant. Ridge ran toward Kaminski’s as the firefighters ran out of the banquet hall.
There was a sickening few minutes of chaos, dust, smoke, and confusion.
“Oh God, I’m going to lose Lamont, and Ridge, and...” I was talking to myself, freaking out. I was about to run in myself and that’s when I saw them.
Lamont was leaning on Ridge as both of them walked out of Kaminski’s.
Thank God. Oh. Thank God!
I ran up and hugged Lamont. I hugged Ridge.
“We need you people BACK! This isn’t stable!!”
All three of us did just that, and then another shift.
The fire was spreading, straight to Kaminski’s Bar and Grill. Straight through the only place I’d ever called home.
* * *
It was shocking how fast my life turned. I watched as fire, smoke, and water altered the bar and the banquet hall from dreams and plans for the future into a nightmare.
Hours after the explosion, I was with the investigators once again.
Did I see anyone, did I know who might have done this?
No, not one person had actual evidence of who tried to burn down Polish Wedding. It had been a pipe bomb, they told me. It was unreal.
“Where did the squad car go, the one that was watching me?” I asked.
The answer was a shrug and a story about how thin they were stretched. There was a mugging; it took priority.
I nodded, but it also meant that no one saw who did this. In broad daylight, no one saw.
“This mean anything to you?” The fire investigators showed me some graffiti on the ally side of my building. I hadn’t noticed it on my way to try to put out the fire.
“Bane? What the heck is that?”
“Doesn’t mean anything to you?”
“No.”
As bad as it was—the fire had destroyed the roof—there was good news too. No one had been hurt. And the structure of our building was still intact. There were still walls. That was something. There was essentially no roof anymore though, and the contents of both areas were scarred by fire, filled with smoke, and soaked with water.
In short, it was a disaster.
“We’re securing this today. In the next few days, city engineers will determine if it has to come down.”
I felt numb as I listened to Stanthree.
He and the other firefighters were talking about tearing down my family’s history. Hell, it was a part of the neighborhood’s history too.
Lamont had stayed inside, defending the place like it was his own. I shuddered to think what would have happened if he hadn’t. The building was important, but seeing Lamont helped me realize what was more important.
In the end I was lucky; we were lucky. No one was hurt. I figured I’d hear later, what exactly had happened, how Bane—I guess—had done this. But I knew that it was Crank behind this: it was a war between him and the neighborhood. And he’d decided I was the prime target.
“You’re coming to the house.” Dziadzia was now sitting in a wheelchair, on the street.
During the chaos, for a moment I’d thought this might kill him, give him a heart attack or something. But it hadn’t. He was dazed in the initial moments, but now he looked clear-eyed.
“Can you get him home?” I asked Terry and she agreed. The house wasn’t far, just a few blocks away. But I didn’t know how long all this would take.
“Sure.”
Dzia wouldn’t be led away without talking to me though.
“Honey,” he promised, “we will get through this. It is just a building. Kaminski’s have been through trouble before. And we punched it in the teeth.” Dziadzia reminded me that we were tough. That I was tough.
“Oh, and you,” Dziadzia continued, looking at Ridge. He had done all he could: saved Lamont, helped me try to fight the fire, and then helped me stay on my feet when it became clear how much I was losing.
“Yes, sir?” Ridge replied.
“I know you were renting. That’s obviously not happening now. We’ll return your deposit. Oh, and I have room at the house for you too.”
“Thank you.”
“You walked into the fire for her, for Lamont, and we all saw it. Didn’t we, Terry?”
“We did. You were brave, maybe stupid, but for sure brave,” Terry confirmed.
Ridge waived off the compliments.
Dzia’s house was big. It could hold me, and Ridge, and whoever else. Though the idea of Ridge Callahan in the Kaminski family home was just one more incongruous thought flitting through my head.
The evening turned to night and flashes of fire, smoke, lights, and neighbors, all strobed in front of my eyes.
It felt like a nightmare, but it was real. Nightmares didn’t leave your eyes red and your hair smelling of smoke. Nightmares like I’d had over the last few days ended; you woke up.
But this was all too real.
Finally, after the strangest hours of my life, the fire crews draped the sidewalk in front of my building with police safety tape. The people who’d been gawking and also trying to offer comfort started to thin out. Eventually, everyone had gone, and there was Ridge and I.
Alone.
He put an arm around me lightly.
“You’re not going to lose the building,” he said.
Maybe he was right, maybe not. You could still see it. They’d stopped destruction, maybe. There were walls, but I knew there was no roof.
After all the work I’d done, it physically hurt to think about. I felt sick to my stomach at what facts I’d have to face in the next few days. I turned to Ridge, and every ounce of strength I’d had evaporated. I’d held on to my emotions so tightly because I needed to make sure the staff and customers were out, and to make sure Dziadzia knew I was okay.
I had clenched my teeth together as I listened to authorities tell me that my rock, my home base, the place I was pinning my future on, could very well be gone.
When Ridge let me lean on him, at the end of it all, that strength I had shown everyone else left me, all of it. I cried softly in his arms. I felt small, defeated, and adrift. I wondered how I could even stand on my own two feet, much less charge forward and save my neighborhood.
“I was so delusional, naïve, stupid. You can’t change anything. It’s all for nothing.”
I said those words and they felt true, but hollow. I was surrendering. Let it all fall apart. I had nothing left to give to anyone right then. I wondered if I ever would again. I was so damn tired.
