I rose and saw his two companions, one near the bar, one at the door, and wanted to ask what they had done with Elzy’s people, but it wasn’t a Q&A moment. Elzy crossed her arms and said, “I see you’ve learned a couple of things from the notebook.”
“More than a couple.”
“Two hours. Come alone, unarmed, or you’ll have a fat corpse on your hands.”
“Where?”
“Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries.” She smiled coyly.
The bakery, where her brother lost his face.
Club Molasses, where my family buried its secrets.
Where everything began and where, I realized, she intended everything to end.
• • •
An hour and fifty-eight minutes is not much time to speed-read part of a chapter, scribble a list, grab cash from a steel briefcase, drive like a maniac to one store and then another store, and then build a bomb.
Actually, the notebook calls it an “incendiary device.”
Chapter six (Metodi–Methods) describes it as ideal for “scare tactics, arson, and safe-cracking.”
It also cautions that it could kill someone, which might be a good thing.
After I aged the brand-new leather notebook I’d purchased by backing over it with the Lincoln and beating it with a hammer, I very carefully wired it with the device. Everything I needed to assemble the little bomb was available at the corner hardware store, which in my former life would’ve been extremely disturbing. My present life was a different story—one that could end prematurely at any time—and I had no moral issue whatsoever about blowing off the rest of that evil sock puppet’s face.
At the hour-fifty-nine mark I pulled up in front of the bakery.
The time for parking down the block had passed.
Leaping roof to roof seemed suddenly ridiculous.
I lifted the notebook, climbed out of the car, and walked through the front door of the bakery, the bell jingling behind me. I’d thought about bringing the .45, but it was bulky and hard to hide, and besides, if my scheme went off as planned I wouldn’t need it. The front of the store was dark and so was the kitchen, but it didn’t matter, I knew where they were, and went straight to the Vulcan. I folded myself inside, whooshed quickly below the earth, and pulled open the heavy steel door of Club Molasses.
It was dark inside except for a single spotlight.
It shone on Doug in the middle of the dance floor.
He was slumped in a chair, chin on his chest, shirt soaked with blood.
I ran to him, set the notebook on the floor, and gently lifted his head. It was impossible not to grimace at his beaten, swollen face. I whispered, “Doug. It’s me, Sara Jane,” and he blinked heavily, trying to focus. Quietly, I said, “Where is he?”
Doug worked his jaws, spit out a tooth, and said, “Right behind you.”
There was no panic, only action, and I spun with my right fist curled at my chin and my left fist in front of my right. Poor Kevin bowed like a huge, rumpled maître d’, emitting a gust of rotten-meat cologne from his melted head. “Welcome to Club Molasses! Table for two?”
“I have the notebook,” I said, vibrating with ghiaccio furioso, feeling it quiver and fade as it had with Elzy. It was plain me versus maniac him, and I said, “Take it and let us go. That was the deal.”
“Let you go? Oh no-no-no!” he trilled, pumping his arms in time to his words like a crazed sports fan. “Not until I inspect the no-no-notebook!”
“You want it?” I said, kicking it across the parquet dance floor. “Go get it.”
Poor Kevin watched it slide like a hockey puck and then looked at me. The pupils of his eyes through the ski mask holes grew larger and smaller, like two crazy cameras trying to find focus, and then he shrugged and shambled after it. And then everything sped up—me lugging Doug toward the door, Poor Kevin picking up the notebook, me bracing for an explosion and then hearing a soft, gentle pop. I turned to him staring at the blank, smoking pages that did not blow up, and then he lifted his horrific head and said as coldly as a frozen knife, “You think I’m stupid?”
“It’s a misunderstanding,” I said, backing toward the door with Doug attached to me like a three-hundred-pound anchor.
“It’s a death sentence!” he squealed, galloping across the floor. I dropped Doug, ducked and moved, and Poor Kevin’s massive fist missed my head by inches. When he turned, I was waiting with a hard left-right combo that stopped him. He shook his head and then went into a fighter’s crouch too, and we squared off on the dance floor. “Hey, this is gonna be fun!” he said as we circled. “Just like the old days when I used to beat the dirt out of that schlub uncle of yours! You Rispolis are all the same, blah-blah-blah, all talk and no . . .” and then he had to stop talking because my fist was in his mouth—once, twice, three times—and he skidded backward. Then he charged forward, and I dropped a shoulder and threw my Willy Williams left hook.
The sound of fist on jawbone cracked across Club Molasses.
Poor Kevin stumbled and reeled to the floor like a train off its tracks.
He slid face-first and hit the bandstand, and I ran for Doug.
“Come on!” I grunted, sitting him up like an enormous toddler, and he was almost to his feet when we both went down. Doug rolled but I was trapped under Poor Kevin, his knee on my back and his big leathery hands finding my neck again, for what I knew would be the last time. His thumbs went to my windpipe and the edges of the world were trimmed in black. Doug lifted up on a shoulder and fell, then tried again, but he was like a newborn turtle with his bruised, closed eyelids.
Dying was not okay, I told myself. There was no resolution or freedom in it. I struggled against it with every muscle and tendon in my body, and when I felt my brain emptying itself of oxygen, I thought of Lou.
No, wait—not Lou—I meant Lou’s dog, Harry.
He blasted out of the darkness like a tiny Italian ball of cold fury and chomped his needle-sharp jaws onto Poor Kevin’s butt cheek, with the freak shrieking and flailing his arms. I had no idea how the crafty little canine got inside Club Molasses—I thought the only way in and out was through the oven elevator or the Capone Door in the office—but realized then that there had to be other doors, yet to be discovered. I rolled onto my back, sucking air, and watched Poor Kevin rip Harry free and throw him softball-style into the backseat of the convertible Ferrari.
Ferrari, I thought, hacking spittle and grabbing Doug by the ankles.
I knew the keys were in the ignition.
I prayed to God there was gasoline in the tank.
I dragged Doug across the parquet floor, my feet stuttering a mile a minute as Poor Kevin sprinted toward us, and then it was all over, done, we were dead, except that a gray hairy sausage dropped from the ceiling. The rat landed on Poor Kevin’s shoulder, snarling and ripping, and he grabbed it and squeezed its guts out. As I shoved Doug into the passenger seat, the masked psycho spun the bloody rat pelt by its worm tail and screeched, “That’s it? That’s all you got? One little mouse!” right before a dozen pissed-off rodents fell on his head. Nunzio’s rats, bred to protect all things Rispoli, were fulfilling their DNA with gusto. Poor Kevin made a noise that was half six-year-old girl, half fingernails on a blackboard. I cranked the engine, and the incredible machine roared to life. Since there was nowhere to go, no way to escape the subterranean space, my simple intention had been to back over the homicidal creep until he stopped moving. But then the headlights popped on and I looked at the wall in front of the Ferrari.
A pattern of bricks formed a large but subtle C.
I suddenly realized how someone got the car down here in the first place.
There were Capone Doors, I thought. Why not Capone Garage Doors?
I leaped from the Ferrari and touched the wall—nothing—and then leaned against it—nothing—then threw a desperate shoulder and heard a creak and a rumble, and the wall lifted slowly, revealing a wide, dark tunnel. I was back in the car with inert Doug and shivering Harr
y, and I paused only for a glance back. Poor Kevin squeezed rats, bit rats, swatted and stomped rats, and then a dozen more of Antonio and Cleopatra’s offspring dove from the ceiling, hissing and clawing at his masked head, his raw fingers, and then another dark mass, and another, until the freak looked like a rat Christmas tree, all of it squirming and ripping, and I couldn’t tell his squealing from theirs.
I had tried to blow him up and then used his head like a speed bag, he had been attacked by a dog, and he was now being nibbled and sliced by a hundred rats, and still he fought on ferociously. I remembered Elzy’s description of her brother—nothing short of a Mack truck would stop him—and leaned heavily on the gas, fishtailing into the tunnel. It twisted and climbed with the cold smell of earth all around me until I heard wheels on concrete, and then the blast of a truck horn as I screeched onto Lower Wacker Drive. My dad’s Lincoln is a fast car but the Ferrari is a fast something else, somewhere between automobile and airplane, and I flew above the pavement. I spun onto Congress and then onto the Eisenhower, and I was gone, going nowhere in particular, just as far away from Poor Kevin as possible. I wept violently on that dark, empty stretch of expressway, expelling leftover fear and fury. I stopped and began again, and then it passed away.
That’s when my disposable phone with the unlisted number rang.
I answered, and a voice said, “Hey, it’s Tyler. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Where . . . how did you get this number?” I said.
“I’m me, remember . . . the guy who gets in touch with untouchables? Listen, what are you doing for dinner later? Have you ever been to Rome?”
“Is that a restaurant?”
“It’s a city in Italy. I’m leaving on the company jet in an hour for business and I want you to come along.”
“Italy,” I murmured, that golden place where I’d dreamed of going, so far away from all of this, except that all of this was my life. “I’d love to,” I said, “but I can’t. Tonight just . . . doesn’t work. But . . .”
“But what?” he said hopefully.
“But . . . have a good trip.”
“I always do.”
“Tyler?” I said. “Rome . . . is it beautiful? I mean, this might sound weird, but . . . is it golden?”
He chuckled and said, “The food’s good,” and hung up.
I felt my heart twist into a knot, looked at the dark phone, and threw it out the window. Until I’d heard his voice, I’d been speeding on a path to no place in particular, with no plan, and no options.
Then I remembered the key he’d given me to the Bird Cage Club.
I’d almost lost my life deep below the earth.
Tonight I would sleep in the clouds, high above Chicago.
23
WATCHING THE MORNING SUN illuminate the Loop is to see miles of shadows change from gray to red to bright shining boxes, rectangles, and obelisks. Pulled puffs of cottony clouds meander past, change shape, and dissipate, and far beyond it all, Lake Michigan stretches to the horizon, first pale green, then blue black.
I stood at the window of the Bird Cage Club thirty-three stories in the air, watching the world come alive again, feeling dead inside.
I’d confronted Uncle Buddy, Detective Smelt, and even Poor Kevin, and all I had to show for it was a beaten, kicked-in friend and a small dog sleeping beside him.
I’d parked the Ferrari in the underground garage and decided to inspect it closely before hefting Doug up to the Bird Cage Club. To my surprise, someone (my dad?) had packed it with getaway provisions, as if the need to speed from middle earth at the drop of a hat was a definite possibility. There was bottled water, a first-aid kit, canned Italian delicacies, even a couple of thick Ferrari traveling blankets. I’d patched up Doug as well as I could the night before, and tried to make him comfortable. Harry walked in a small circle and then lay at his side, the first real sign of affection he’d shown anyone besides Lou. Doug rubbed the dog’s back and said, “You saved my life.”
“Barely.”
“I’m sorry, Sara Jane. I was trying to help.”
“You can’t do things like that, Doug,” I told him. “You could’ve gotten killed.”
“As beatings go, it was worse than I imagined,” he said. “But not half as bad as what I probably deserved.”
“What movie is that from?” I said.
“The movie of my life. By the way, the sidekick approves,” he said, gesturing around the room.
“Of what?”
“Our hideout,” he said, yawning hugely. “It’s perfect.”
Afterward he rolled over painfully, Harry snuggled closer, and the two of them were still asleep when I woke at dawn. I walked the perimeter of the Bird Cage Club, looking out every window, and discovered that a sturdy stone terrace surrounded the dome. One of the windows was a door. I wrapped myself in a blanket and stepped outside, and then I was inhaling the chill morning air. Thirty-three stories is a long way down, and I was stricken by a sense of despair that made existence seem pointless and hollow. All of the running, all of the fighting and surviving, and I still didn’t know where my family was—it occurred to me again that I might never know. Slowly, I peered over the edge of the terrace, feeling the terrifying-exciting pull to jump, to abandon earth and its disappointments, when I heard Doug mumbling, “I think Harry is sick.”
I turned to his hefty, ass-kicked form in the doorway.
He was bruised and puffy, looking very much like an enormous crushed grape.
“He’s trying to throw up but seems stuck.”
We walked inside and Doug was right, Harry was hacking and retching, his jaws working and his ribs drawn tightly to his chest. “Harry,” I said, stroking his back, and he coughed once, twice, and puked out a tiny, clear plastic tube.
“What the hell is that?” Doug said, embracing poor, panting Harry.
I picked up the slimy thing—it was the length and size of a cigarette butt—and looked at it closely. “There’s something inside,” I said, twisting it until a tiny top popped off and a tightly rolled length of paper fell into my hand. I opened it carefully and read a quickly scrawled paragraph.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Beneath it, in the same handwriting, read—
Once around at noon, only on Sundays.
A wave of dizziness washed over me, my hands went numb, and the paper fluttered to the floor. I walked outside to inhale fresh air, my mind spinning but also clicking at warp speed. Doug appeared beside me, read the note, and said, “I don’t get it.”
“I think I do,” I answered, staring across the vista at Navy Pier jutting into the lake, its convention buildings, tourist boats, and Ferris wheel like a collection of children’s toys. “Is today Sunday?” I said. Doug nodded, and I thought of what Uncle Buddy said, how Harry had been hanging around my house. When I didn’t show up, the cagey little animal must’ve made his way back to the bakery, and Club Molasses, to wait for me—but how, and for how long? “I hope it’s the right Sunday,” I said.
“For what?” Doug asked anxiously.
I looked at the concern etched on his face and knew that he would do anything I asked. But just by proximity I’d drawn him nearly to the point of death, and I would not allow it to happen again. “I have to do something, and I have to do it alone. You can’t follow me or try to help me,” I said.
“Please,” he said, “I owe you.”
“I told you about the notebook . . .”
“Yeah, but I want to be part of this, whatever it is.”
“Doug,” I said, summoning the ghiaccio furioso, locking eyes until his chin began to quiver. “You will not be a part of this. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, yes,” he said in a voice that was small and alone,
and I saw his fear—a snippet of a movie in which Poor Kevin finished what he started with Doug in a bloody and violent way.
“The notebook,” I said, “is here, in the steel briefcase. If I don’t come back, I want you to burn it. Burn it, Doug . . . every damn page, handwritten note, old photo, and unlisted phone number. It’s mine, it’s my life, and you will do as I ask.”
“Yes,” he whispered, and I looked away. Doug sighed with relief, and when he found his voice he said, “Of course I’ll do whatever you say. You’re the hero.”
“I’m no hero,” I said. “How can a victim like me be a hero?”
“According to some of the greatest movies ever made, by not becoming like the assholes who victimized you,” Doug said. “Hitting that masked creep with my computer was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, because he was trying to kill you. On the other hand, I still don’t know if what happened to Billy was justified. All I know for sure is that being smarter than an enemy is better than resorting to violence. The great hero is always more patient and much more observant. And then he . . . she . . . wins.” He wiped at his nose and handed me the note, saying, “Did you notice the upper-right-hand corner?” I hadn’t, and I now looked at part of a business letterhead, which read MISTER KREAMY KO— with the rest torn away. “It has to be Mister Kreamy Kone. You know, the chocolate-dipped frozen concoctions sold from the black ice cream trucks.”
“I guess I never noticed them . . . I don’t eat that stuff,” I murmured, remembering what Elzy said about black ice cream trucks surrounding my house before my family disappeared.
“It’s so awesome. The truck stops, you insert money into the side like an ATM, and out pops the deliciousness. You never even see a driver. All the windows are tinted black too. Kind of weird, isn’t it?”
“Weird,” I said, thinking how the CEO of StroBisCo might have useful information about another Chicago junk-food company. Or, if it was unionized, Knuckles would have to know something—deploying strikebreakers fell under his job description. And then, of course, there was my own personal Talmud-Bible-Koran, the notebook. If Mister Kreamy Kone had even the slightest thread of a connection to the Outfit, it would be in there. Right now, however, was not the time to study; now was the time to get my mind and gut ready for what I had to do at noon.
Cold Fury Page 23
