“That was in the file.”
“I know,” I said. And Frank knew I only asked questions because I loved him.
“Yes, I did. By the other kids. Not the guards.”
“And they thought you killed your m—”
He put his hand over my mouth. “You done?”
I nodded the best I could with the neck brace.
“Maggie called while I was walking. She misses you. Us. We’re to be there by Friday at the latest or you’re grounded.”
“Grounded?” I gaped. “She can’t ground me! And how come I’d be the one getting grounded anyway? It’d be your fault!”
“Tell me you don’t like it,” he dared.
I rested my head against his shoulder. Punishment always had been the best part of misbehaving. “Do you think we’ll make it?”
“It’s a long drive.”
“Grounded like restricted to my bedroom, or grounded like no TV?”
“My bedroom,” Frank corrected, “has no TV.”
I hopped off the hood, stomped out the smoldering ashes of Frank’s prison record, and ushered the dog back in the car. “We have to leave right away!”
Frank grinned as evilly as Bella, and threw his keys into the darkness. Before I could balk at his attempted sabotage, Charlie shot out the open door like a rocket and ran after them.
“Great. She’s on your side,” he muttered, and got in the car.
His tires squealed in the underground garage, echoing loudly with the slightest turn of the wheel. I’d always found the suffocated scent of exhaust from parking garages to be strangely reassuring, but knowing what was waiting for us upstairs made it different. Special. I could practically smell the hearty meals, the warmth of a home that wasn’t temporary, one without the neon desperation of a flashing vacancy sign, no-tell motels with keycards and ice machines and vibrating beds.
I’d never been to Oregon. Now that I knew who lived here, it made sense why Frank had avoided it, driving completely around the state even when we went from Washington to California.
Frank parked beside a sea green 1968 Cadillac Convertible, a boat of a car that looked sturdy enough to survive a collision with a tank so long as the top was up. There were pink fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror, and an upside-down bumper sticker promoting the Multnomah County Library.
“Nice car,” I said. My dad would’ve liked that one as much as Bella’s rental. It was a classic.
“That’s Maggie’s,” he said, getting out and whistling for Charlie to follow. We’d given her a flea bath yesterday, and got her a clean collar with neon paw prints that glowed in the dark so we could safely walk her at night. She still smelled a little like chemicals, but at least she, and I, had stopped itching.
The fleas hadn’t seemed to bother Frank. I’d dared him to make a comment about my former street urchin status, just tempting him to piss me off so I could bring up the fact that he’d called me a tart. He hadn’t taken the bait. I kept my secret weapon on reserve until I needed something to be mad at him for.
He checked his watch. “We just made it.”
It was sheer cheek on his part. We could’ve been here hours ago. We could’ve been here this morning. But no, we arrived at a quarter to midnight on Friday night, pushing our luck and Maggie’s patience.
Frank put his arm around me and we walked to the elevator. He still had issues with them, but we’d never make it in on time if we took the stairs, and twice during our travels Maggie had called to remind him that my being grounded meant him sleeping on the couch.
He pressed every button with his knuckle, then kissed my head. I knew where we were really going. It was always nine. Every apartment of his I’d had the privilege to help him christen was on the ninth floor of some high-rise.
Charlie ran on ahead in the familiar open space of bare hardware floors, sniffing wet nose prints into the dust every couple of feet. She stopped at the exact spot Frank had buried treasure, and barked at us with her tail wagging. I had to give it to her, she was smarter than her namesake.
“This isn’t where Maggie lives,” I said observantly, following my husband to dig up the floorboards.
“She’s downstairs. I have to get the key.”
I smiled to myself. I’d bet his life savings that Maggie had no idea he kept a secret lair directly above her.
He pulled out a copy of The Count of Monte Cristo from the bottom of the stack, slightly more worn than the usual pristine books he kept in his secret hiding places. Inside was a single key, with an Eiffel Tower keychain. He held it up like it was a winning lottery ticket, and put the floorboards back.
“Come on, we’ve only got a couple minutes,” he said, then grabbed me around the hips when I tried to leave, pulling me off my feet as I reached desperately for the door. I hit him in the balls to remind him how sore they’d be if I was grounded. He set me back down, taking my hand and leading me to the elevator.
Her apartment had a bright blue front door in stark contrast to the boring brown ones throughout the rest of the hallway, and a faded welcome mat that nevertheless conveyed its message with enthusiasm. I couldn’t keep myself from smiling as we approached. I felt like I was coming home.
“Here,” he said, and handed me the key. “You go ahead. I’m going to take Charlie for a walk. She’s not housebroken.”
I froze, my hand on the small brass Eiffel Tower. It felt suddenly sharp. God, he was dumping me somewhere I’d be safe so he could leave with a guilt-free conscience. “Are you coming back?” I said, my heart in my throat.
“Of course I’m coming back. I’m just walking the dog. What are you talking about?”
“You’re gonna leave because I fucked up like Bella,” I said with my head down, not daring to look at him, trying my hardest to keep the tears at bay.
“V, what happened with Bella was…it wasn’t like this. Bella’s been working longer than I have. Since before you were born. With as little training as you’ve had—”
“But the first thing you taught me! If I’d just waited. You saw me fall! You were right there!”
“Patience has never been one of your strengths, kiddo. But survival…survival you are fucking good at. And being insecure. You’re good at that, too,” Frank framed my face with his hands. “I’m not abandoning you, Vincent,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “How could I? You know all my secrets.”
I smacked him.
He pulled me into a firm hug, Charlie whining for attention at his heel. “I’ll be right back. I promise. Now get your skinny ass in there before you get us in trouble.”
“I’ll come after you. I’ll track you down and break your legs.”
He smiled. “I know.”
I shoved him away from me and stuck the key in the lock, looking over my shoulder to smile at him as he disappeared into the dark stairwell. I turned the knob.
Maggie’s home smelled like cookies and flowers, and the even the walls were warm, adorned with slightly off center pictures of Casey growing up and various bizarre works of art. There was a bookshelf that went nearly to the ceiling, full of books varying from romance novels to eighteenth century philosophy, and miscellaneous knickknacks, souvenir snow globes and a small stuffed pink poodle with a beret wearing an Eiffel Tower t-shirt.
“Is that Vincent?” came Maggie’s southern accented voice from somewhere to my right.
I followed her voice through the soft light of the hallway, through the cozy living room with a couch that was by far long enough for Frank to sleep on and a coffee table covered with tabloid newspapers and a TV Guide thick enough to go on the bookshelf. She had a nice TV. It wasn’t dusty, which I took as more of a grand reception than the multi-colored helium balloons threatening to lift the ceiling and enter Frank’s apartment above, and welcome banners taped to the wall.
Maggie and Casey were sitting at the kitchen table, holding playing cards. She was in curlers. He was in pigtails. They both beamed at me, though Casey’s smile stayed long after
Maggie’s faded into a stern motherly look.
“I ought to ground you on principle, walking in here two minutes to Saturday,” she said, setting her cards down and standing so she could put her hands on her hips.
That’s why Frank went for a walk! He was throwing me to the wolves so they wouldn’t be hungry when he got back. Too bad for him that I’d never be much more than an appetizer.
“Where’s the Count?” Casey asked, shamelessly taking a peek at her hand. He got slapped upside the head for it, but didn’t put them down until he’d gotten a good look.
“The Count?” I asked, eyeing the cake on the center of the table, Welcome Home Vincent and Frank written in pink icing. I wasn’t pleased about the color, but it was all the same going down, and the crumbled candy on top looked suspiciously like it came from a Snicker’s bar.
He laughed. “Frank.”
“He’s walking Charlie so she won’t pee in the house.”
They both cocked their heads in unison.
“Our new dog.”
“Ah,” they said, again acting as one. These two were a riot.
“Why’d you call him ‘the Count’?” I asked, sitting down across from the cake. Maggie smiled and set a plate of food in front of me; barbeque chicken and ribs, potato salad, coleslaw and macaroni and cheese, devilled eggs, and a stack of chocolate chip cookies; food that could kill a man to eat it this late at night. The plate was packed so full that the whole table leaned distinctly in my direction. This was home all right.
“He didn’t tell you how we met? I have to show you!” Casey said, jumping up and running back to the other side of the apartment.
Frank had given me the gist of it, said that he’d helped them the way he would’ve helped me; gotten them a place to live where they’d be safe, given them some spending money and checked in on them whenever he could. Except that instead of hiding me away in an apartment somewhere as if I was a treasure in a safe deposit box, he’d kept me with him, hidden like the worn books in his coat pocket.
Maggie shook her head and sat beside me, taking a look at his cards, swearing, and throwing them down. “Case convinced himself that Frank was AWOL from the Legionnaires. Then we got on the subject of prison, and he decided Frank must be like The Count of Monte Cristo instead.”
Frank must’ve loved that. No wonder that’s the book he chose to hide their key.
Casey came up behind me, pushing aside my plate and setting down a framed sketch of a prisoner sitting in a tunnel with a scraggly beard and long hair to match. I had to laugh. Frank was right, Casey was a talented kid. It looked just like him under all the filth. Not that he’d ever be so unkempt.
“Don’t starve the poor child, Casey.” she scolded.
“Sorry, Vin,” he said, scooting my chair closer to the food. “Okay, here’s the story. Frank was in this shithole diner where Mom used to work—”
“Watch your language,” Maggie interjected.
“Yes ma’am,” Casey said. He didn’t have an accent, despite both his parents being from Georgia. But when he called her ma’am, it came out in full swing, so he could be insolent even while submitting.
“It was a shithole,” Maggie added.
“It was,” he confirmed. “So Frank was there, minding his own business in the darkest corner—”
“I sat him back there deliberately. I can tell when a man needs to be put in the corner.”
“And my dad was being—”
“Selfish as usual. Thinking of nobody but himself, dropping Casey off in the middle of my shift because he had more important things to do than watch his son that evening. Well, my boss, the sweetheart, starts going off on me, saying he didn’t run a day care and my little angel was bothering the customers—”
“And Frank sticks up for her! Shy Frank hiding in the corner actually speaks to another human being, and tells him that he wasn’t bothered. He was the only customer after all.”
“Oh, my boss was pissed,” Maggie said, batting her eyelashes like it had been the happiest day of her life. “He had nothing to say to me after that.”
“I was doing this drawing of Mom’s boss with his head exploding, and Frank came by and told me ‘there’d be more blood than that.’ He was so cool.”
I laughed. It was easy to imagine Casey as an impressionable twelve year old. He still had that glow in his eyes, like everything was new and exciting.
“Well, Frank got it in his head to worry about us, and he started hanging around the diner, waiting for me to come back to work. You see, I’d had to swap shifts to watch the boy because his father wouldn’t lift a finger to help. And I’ll tell you, honey, no one hung around that place. Even the employees spent as little time there as possible. Hell on Earth, if ever there was one. But there he was, drinking cup after cup of coffee, making himself sick as a dog, waiting for me to show up. And when I did, I had young Casey in tow, so Case immediately goes over and starts harassing him instead of doing his homework—”
“It wasn’t even due yet.”
“It was a book report for The Count of Monte Cristo. As you can imagine, Frank was thrilled. And Casey,” she said, pulling one of his pigtails, “all of a sudden had an interest in reading.”
“He started reciting it to me. It was really neat. He got so into it!”
“He does that,” I said proudly. My Frank, impressing twelve year olds and their mothers alike.
“I made Mom invite him over for dinner.”
“He needed a good meal. Poor baby. So I start cooking the second I get off work, wanting to give him something that’d hold him, skinny as a rail that boy, and Casey’s staring out the window waiting for him.”
“Frank stood outside for twenty minutes, holding flowers and looking like he was walking to the gallows. I had to run out and get him or he never would’ve come inside.”
“He thought it was some sort of date,” Maggie said, and they both laughed. I could imagine Frank blushing from head to toe. I tried not to be jealous. “Now, mind you he hadn’t had any intention of asking me out on a date, but he’d spent the whole day thinking that I would’ve gotten the wrong impression, and he didn’t want to insult me! Oh, the relief on his face when I told him I thought no such thing!”
“He was a bit embarrassed though,” Casey said. “I came to his rescue and said the flowers were obviously for me. Then we fed him, and he told us he’d bought us a new place to live.”
“I was tempted to call the cops, I must admit.”
“But I said he was nice, and she went easy on him.”
“Well, you don’t come into people’s homes and try to name yourself godfather to their children, Casey. It just isn’t done.”
I laughed. Poor Frank. He was apparently even more awkward ten years ago.
Frank cleared his throat from the corner of the living room, where it was dark enough for him to have gone unnoticed. All three of us jumped, Maggie holding her chest like a true southern belle and gasping, exclaiming his name the way other people would exclaim “Jesus!” or “Fuck you scared the life out of me!”
I smiled at him, wondering how long he’d been listening. Charlie had been uncharacteristically quiet through all of it. He was already training her.
“That dog is uglier than the last one, Frank,” Casey said with a grin, getting up to go say hi. I didn’t have to ask. Of course he’d have given his previous canine companion to Casey. This was the only good home he knew of, and he wouldn’t have abandoned the dog to just anybody.
“You hungry, hon?” Maggie asked him as she added more to my barely dented stack of food. I was beginning to doubt the abilities of my stomach.
He shook his head.
“Well, at least come have a drink,” she said, though she may as well have told him to get his ass over there and talk to her. “Casey, show Vincent around or something.”
“Casey, make yourself scarce,” he said cheekily in his mother’s accent. “Come on, Vincent. We have much to discuss.”
&nbs
p; Déjà vu. I wondered whether he’d try lifting my shirt like Bella.
I spooned another heaping mouthful down my throat and got up, leaving my chair pulled out for Frank and giving him a reassuring hug as I passed. “Be brave. You can take her.”
He kissed my head and handed me off to his little brother, before stepping forward like once again the gallows were awaiting him. Charlie followed us out of the room.
“Is she gonna yell at him for bringing me home late?” I asked. I knew he was having a harder time with all this than he’d ever let on, and getting a scolding wouldn’t help. He’d been gone too long to have merely taken Charlie around the block, and he smelled heavily of cigarettes. He’d probably let the dog pee on the side of the building and gone to brood in the stairwell in solitude until he sensed that someone was talking about him.
“No, she’s just worried about him. We both are. That’s why she kept calling.”
“Frank said she was calling to check on me.”
“He wouldn’t answer the phone if he knew we were concerned about him,” he said, suddenly looking very serious. “When you were in surgery, he started writing down all these addresses. He told Mom there was money there, and she should have it,” he paused, sighing deeply. It ruined my whole day to see Casey frown. I wanted him to shake it off and smile again. “It really scared her, seeing him like that. He hadn’t even cried, he was just…detached. She slapped him for thinking about money, thinking that’s all he was to us. And then he didn’t stop crying until you woke up.”
He finally smiled again, but there was still a deep sadness in his eyes. “I told him you’d be okay. And you are! But Mom’s gonna try to talk him into taking some time off anyway. He needs it.”
“That’ll be a short conversation,” I said.
“Really?” Casey asked, and he beamed at me, returning completely to his normal bubbly self. He didn’t even give me a chance to respond before hugging me, picking me up and swinging me around like he’d never been so thrilled. “That’s great! Is this a permanent thing?”
Chance Assassin: A Story of Love, Luck, and Murder Page 34
