Starr Sign

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  “But how did the nurse end up dead in a freezer?” Deep asks, putting down his glass.

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “But I don’t understand,” Janet says. “Mom didn’t tell me anything about a brother.”

  “She didn’t tell you why she was going to see the Scarpellos, either,” I say, then wish that I hadn’t.

  “What do you mean?” Janet asks. “She wanted to see her grandfather. He was dying.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” I say, trying to backtrack. “Don’t know what I was thinking.” I don’t want to let on what Roberto told me, about Angela making waves for Alex Scarpello. Ones that possibly got her pulled out to sea to sleep with the fishes. The kid is freaked out enough.

  Janet narrows her eyes at me. “You know something,” she says. “You know something about Mom.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do,” she says, jumping up off the couch, her hands in tight fists. One of them still holds a coloured pencil, and for a moment, I think she’s going to stab me with it. “You know something, and you’re not saying.”

  “Now listen, you just have to trust me on this —”

  “I don’t trust you. You didn’t even come home last night when you said you would.” She’s shaking now, raising her voice.

  “My car broke down,” I say, trying to keep my temper in check. Not something I excel at even under normal circumstances. “I slept in a ravine for fuck’s sake. All to find your goddamn mother.”

  “Our mother!”

  I shift my position in the chair, ready to twist the arm holding the pointy pencil behind Janet’s back if the situation calls for it.

  Deep stands up and makes a motion with his arms, like an umpire calling an out.

  “Okay, let’s just all calm down here,” he says. “Why don’t I fix us something to eat.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I say.

  Janet plunks herself back down on the couch.

  “How about I make you another one of those strawberry protein shakes you liked so much,” Deep says to Janet, all composed and reasonable. Two traits that annoy me at the best of times.

  My sister throws her pointy pencil onto the table, crosses her arms. “Fine,” she says, refusing to look at either of us.

  “How about you, Candace?” he asks.

  I grunt something in the affirmative. I’m pretty hungry. The last time I ate was a stale Jamaican beef patty I lifted on my way out the door of the E-Zee Market yesterday.

  “Two strawberry protein shakes coming up,” Deep says, heading toward the kitchen island. From a cupboard, he pulls out a food processor the size of a small outboard motor. Janet and I sit in silence in the living room. Both of us cringe when he pushes the power button. A set of vicious blades whir to life, liquefying in seconds the kale and frozen strawberries he’s dropped into it. Honestly, you could get rid of an entire corpse with the power of that thing — pour the body down the drain when you were done.

  “I just want to find Mom,” Janet says, all the fight gone out of her. I can barely hear her over the blender.

  “I know.”

  She picks at a thread from Deep’s couch, worrying it between her slim fingers. I can see now that her eyes are reddened behind her thick glasses. She probably didn’t sleep well last night, worried about where I was, as well as her mother.

  “You think I’m a baby, but I’m not,” she says.

  “I don’t think you’re a baby.” But I do. She may be tall and smarter than most her age, but I have underwear older than this kid.

  Janet gives the thread a final violent tug. It comes off with a snap. “If something’s happened to Mom, you have to tell me. I deserve to know. If she’s, if she’s —”

  “Straws?” Deep blurts out, placing two insulated tumblers filled to the top with a pink froth on the coffee table. In his hands he holds a couple of shiny silver tubes. Why hadn’t he grabbed those earlier? Metal straws would have been a whole lot more lethal than a vacuum. Janet looks up at him and then drops her face into her hands.

  “Did I miss something?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say, grabbing the straws and dropping them in the drinks. “You missed putting vodka in mine.”

  He sits back down with Janet, ignoring me. That’s okay. I was only joking. I hate vodka with milk.

  “Listen, Janet,” I say, leaning across the coffee table. “It’s nothing like that.” Although it might be something like that. Something like Angela being dead for trying to stage a coup in the Scarpello dynasty with a son she pulled out of the woodwork. But the woman hasn’t lasted this long without being a crafty survivor of dangerous circumstances. I bet after a nuclear holocaust she’d still emerge from the mushroom cloud, fully intact and covered in cockroaches.

  “Then what is it?” Janet asks, looking up from her hands, managing to hold back the tears that threaten behind her big glasses. “What did you find out?” She stares me down, waiting for an answer.

  Deep tilts his head at an inquiring angle, also waiting. I feel more pressure from these two earnest faces than I did after eight solid hours of questioning without a pee break in detention. I realize I’m going to have to give up the conversation with Roberto after all. I suppose my sister has a right to know.

  “Okay,” I say. “There’ve been rumours.”

  “What kind of rumours?”

  “Rumours that Angela was making trouble for Alex Scarpello.”

  “What could Mom have done to get in trouble with him?”

  “If Angela started telling people she had a son. She wouldn’t have been too popular with the guy in line to be the new Don,” I tell her.

  “Why?” Janet asks.

  I’m trying to find a tactful way to explain to her the often-violent succession rules of a Mob family, when Deep beats me to it.

  “He could have challenged Alex Scarpello for leadership.”

  I take a long slurp of the strawberry protein shake through the metal straw. It tastes like Lovely Linda’s strawberry lip gloss smells. Which is pretty damn good.

  “But how could that get Mom into trouble?” Janet asks. “Wouldn’t they just be after her son, not her?”

  Deep and I exchange a look, both knowing that Mafia families are not fans of loose ends. Every dangling string attached would have to be tied up, if only for appearance’s sake.

  “It may not be that simple,” Deep says. That’s about the kindest way you can say that your mother may have been whacked by her own family to keep her quiet.

  “I don’t understand,” Janet says, shaking her head.

  Just then my phone starts vibrating in my pocket. I take it out and look at the call display. Malone again. I throw the phone to Janet on the couch.

  “Here,” I say. “You gotta answer this. Make sure you tell Malone you were out getting milk earlier. And about the science museum. But nothing else.”

  Deep gets up from the couch and motions me toward the bedroom. Something tells me it’s not to take advantage of me now that I’m relatively sober. I sit down on the plump white comforter spread out without a wrinkle on the bed. He closes the door behind us.

  “Who was in that car, Candace?” he asks me, still standing.

  “Thanks for looking after Janet,” I say, leaning way back on my elbows, so my boobs are thrust forward. It’s a cheap trick, but you can get guys to ignore a lot with much less.

  “Stop taking the piss,” Deep says. I’ve watched enough of Fleabag to know this means he thinks I’m screwing with him. Which, of course, I sort of am.

  I sit up straight again on the bed. “I’m not sure, okay? Someone’s been following me.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since the night before last.”

  He digests that for a bit. “Is it the Scarpellos?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “But I think if it was them, they’d have made a move by now.” Truthfully, they did make a move, on the side of the road last night. But if it had been hired muscle
from the family, they would have brought a gun into the open basement of that farmhouse, not a bouncing phone flashlight. Still, you never know.

  “But just in case I’m wrong, maybe you should take the kid for a few more days. Until I figure it out.”

  “I’m not a babysitting service, Candace.”

  “I get that.”

  He comes to sit beside me on the bed. “Do you reckon your mother really was aiming to have your brother made the new Don?”

  “I don’t know. I figure Angela must have given him up for adoption when he was born. But she could have found a way of locating him.”

  “How?”

  “She’s not stupid, Deep. There are ways to find these things out.” Angela had the shrewd intelligence that fucked-in-the-head people often possess. At least that’s what I’d been told. “Your mother was no idiot,” my father was fond of saying, “except when it came to keeping her yap shut.”

  “If she convinced your brother to make a bid for leadership, it would have meant a big payout, both for him and for her. He’d need to have the right background, of course.”

  “You mean a criminal background.”

  He nods.

  “Take a look at my family, Deep. There’s a pretty strong genetic argument for him being a felon.”

  “It’s not all about genetics.”

  “Whatever.”

  “But if there have been people questioning Alex Scarpello’s right to lead for years,” Deep says, “why would Angela have waited so long to get your brother sorted?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t even know if that’s what she was up to. Or if that’s what got Alex Scarpello pissed at her. This brother bullshit may be a red herring or whatever you call it. My twin could be living in Topeka in his adoptive parent’s basement for all I know.”

  “Then where’s Angela?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you know much of anything, Candace,” Deep says, then adds, “despite being gone all night.”

  “My car broke down.”

  “So you say.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Deep. I didn’t even find out I had a twin brother until this morning, or a sister until the day before yesterday, so pardon me if I’m not up on all the details of my entire fucking family tree.”

  I get up off the bed and open the door to retreat from Deep’s interrogations. In the living room, I find Janet stuffing a pile of her T-shirts and one of the metal straws into her Oxford bag. She is no longer wearing her glasses. Her eyes seem even more massive now that they’re unleashed. They draw you in, make you think she’s older than she is. Maybe I shouldn’t be leaving her with Deep after all, gentleman or not.

  “Listen, you may not want to pack that bag too fast,” I say. “It might be a good idea to lay low here for a few days while I take care of a few things.”

  “I’m not staying here,” Janet says. “I’m going to Detroit.”

  Deep has come up to stand beside me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Candace,” he says close to my ear.

  “Of course it’s not a good fucking idea,” I say to him, then turn back to my sister. “You are not going to Detroit, Janet.”

  “Yes, I am,” she says, grabbing her sketchbook from the kitchen table and cramming it into her bag. “And you can’t stop me.”

  “I sure as hell can,” I tell her. “I’ve made a goddamn career out of stopping people.”

  “So, what are you going to do?” she says, turning to face off with me, her hands on her skinny hips. “Kill me?”

  “No, Janet, I’m not going to kill you.”

  “Well, then, I’m going. Detroit was the last place Mom was and that’s where we should be looking for her.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You think I’m not capable, you think I can’t handle myself? How do you think I got over the border with Aunt Stacey?”

  I remember Malone wondering about this. “How?” I say.

  “I used a fake ID, that’s how. Says I’m eighteen, old enough to travel without a parent.”

  “Where the hell did you get that?” She would need something pretty sophisticated to fool a U.S. border guard. You can’t just liquid paper over the birth year on your library card for those guys.

  “I bought it online,” she says. “Through the dark web.”

  “The fucking dark web?” Jesus, the things a kid can see on there could put them into therapy for years. Not to mention that she might have found my stats.

  “What I’m saying is, I know how to take care of myself, Candace. And I’m going to Detroit.”

  I can’t believe she’s trying to play me with this little teenage rebellion fit. She may think she’s a badass, but she wouldn’t last a second with the kind of vultures that start to circle around a thirteen-year-old girl on her own in that city. I imagine her, trying to hitch a ride with those two stoners looking for ass, gas, or grass, and the strawberry smoothie starts to curdle in my stomach. I don’t like being concerned enough about someone to be given indigestion. I see my phone where she has discarded it on the kitchen table, and I hit her with the worst threat I can think of.

  “I’ll tell Malone to put you in Social Services,” I say.

  “I’ll run away,” she counters.

  “Fucking hell,” I shout, kicking one of the discarded hard drives on the floor with my cowboy boot. It flies across the carpet and comes to rest on the leg of the wood coffee table, leaving a dent.

  I can’t let this kid go to Detroit on her own. And as she points out, I can’t kill her. I am uncomfortably out of options. Or else I wouldn’t make the offer I’m about to make.

  “I’ll go,” I say.

  She looks up at me. “You’ll go to Detroit?” she says. “You’ll talk to the Scarpellos?”

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but yes.” Roberto said that answers could be dangerous in the family. But better me than my sister walking into that particular minefield.

  “Fine,” she says. “But I’m going, too.”

  “Aw, c’mon Janet. Just stay here with Deep. Let me handle things.”

  I’m sure I can convince Deep to keep her. I’ll turn on the charm again. I’ll get him some more bacon.

  “Why don’t we all go?” Deep says.

  “What?” This I hadn’t been expecting, and it doesn’t work for me. Bad enough to be saddled with a thirteen-year-old, but I don’t need some guy in chinos and a neat streak cramping my style.

  “I can look after Janet there, while you check into things,” he says to me.

  “I don’t need looking after,” Janet fumes.

  “I could help you, Candace,” Deep says, still pleading his case. “I can get you information where most people can’t. And I don’t have to beat it out of a person to get it. I just have to use a few keystrokes. I could even find out where your brother is.”

  I think about this. It’s true. Data is the newest weapon of mass destruction. If Deep can get access to the birth registrations and adoption records without the hassle and delay Malone has to go through, it could help a lot. If we found my brother, it might lead us to Angela, and my sister wouldn’t have to spend her life as an orphan, like me. Hell, if we found my twin, maybe the two of us could stage our own coup on the Scarpello leadership, sharing the spoils. I’ve sworn off killing people for a living. But if I had the Mob behind me, I wouldn’t have to. The Mafia usually farms that shit out now.

  “Can you hack into birth registries?” I ask Deep.

  “I can hack into just about anything,” he says. “And I have a car. That deathtrap of yours won’t make it out of the county.”

  I’m suspicious. Nobody helps someone like me out of the kindness of their hearts. He’s got to have his own agenda.

  “I don’t get it, Deep. What’s in it for you?” I ask him. But he’s already getting something heavy down out of the hall closet.

  “Adventure,” he says, coming into the living room with two hardside
Heys suitcases in matching Easter-egg blue. They both have little wheelies on the bottom. He starts packing his computer equipment, careful to include a bottle of nasal spray and a fidget spinner he had sitting on the desk. “I don’t get a lot of that.”

  “I bet you don’t,” Janet says. She rolls her eyes at me, but she’s smiling. It’s the first time I’ve seen her do that since I came back to the house.

  While Deep packs, I take the bottle of Rémy Martin and go sit on the front steps. The cold of the concrete on my ass makes a nice contrast with the warmth of the brandy. I watch as the high branches of trees sway in the wind, listen to the sounds of birds I’ll never know the names of. I may be a city girl, but I can still appreciate the outdoors. At least when I’m not sleeping in a ravine.

  I look down the long driveway toward the road and wonder whether the Chrysler will come back. It could be an agent of the Scarpellos in that sedan. If Angela was planning what we think, they may have gotten rid of both her and my brother, then decided to come for me. But if that’s the case, they shouldn’t have bothered.

  Because it looks like I’ll be coming to them.

  CHAPTER 8

  WE’VE BEEN ON THE ROAD A FEW HOURS when I see the Gun Superstore coming up on the horizon. I remember it from a trip my dad and I took once for an out-of-town gig. We had to snuff a serial pedophile who got freed on a technicality and make it look like an accident. All the parents on the soccer team he used to coach had taken up a collection to pay our fee. The guy ran into traffic running away from us and got hit by a Pepperidge Farm truck. I still can’t look at a box of Goldfish crackers without feeling smug.

  “Pull over,” I say to Deep.

  “What, here?” Deep asks me, taking in the huge neon shotgun that flashes like a Las Vegas stripper sign on top of the flat gravel roof.

  “Yes, here.”

  Deep signals and turns into the parking lot. One storey high and sprawling, the superstore looks like a large strip mall with no windows. We have to search a while for a place to park, despite it being a Wednesday afternoon. Crowds of people walk in and out in a steady stream, with grocery carts empty or full depending on their direction. There’s a hot dog vendor near the entrance, with a line-up, mostly parents with kids who keep pushing each other. The place is busier than goddamn Costco on a Saturday.