Pardon the Ravens

by Alan Hruska

  “Get the fuck outta bed!” he says, grabbing her and pulling her up by the armpits.

  Which is how Alec discovers the kind of hold being placed on his arm. When he struggles, Vito almost breaks it off, pushing Alec’s face harder into the mattress. But Alec can, with a wrench of his head, still see Carrie made to stand on the carpet, stark naked, within the full sight of two other men. Reacting, he feels another screeching pain through his shoulders. Carrie’s face is dreamy, as if this isn’t happening.

  Phil says, “You two, I own you now. And you play by my rules. Rule No. 1: Sarah comes with me, and stays with me. No visitation, no weekends, no court battles. You’re out of her life. Rule No. 2: nobody testifies. I don’t care who subpoenas you; you testify, you die. You think about testifying, you die. Both of you. Got it?”

  Not getting an answer, he grabs Carrie by the hair. At her look of pain and blind hatred, he yanks her scalp upward, until, screaming, she dances like a spastic puppet, with flailing arms. “I asked you a question!” he says.

  “Okay!”

  Released, she collapses to the floor.

  “And you?” Phil says, turning on Alec.

  “You sick fuck!”

  Phil nods to Vito who calmly dislocates Alec’s shoulder. With Alec’s shriek of pain, Sarah starts crying in the other room. Phil goes to her, Vito in his wake. Alec, despite the agony, crawls after them, seeing how easily his furniture barricade had been pushed aside and the door chain severed.

  “Hush, baby,” Phil croons to his daughter. Propped on his chest, she peers over his shoulder.

  Alec, from the floor, gives her a wink, thinking, It’s amazing what we do for the innocence of children.

  Sarah smiles. “Stop thief!” she exclaims with glee, leaving the apartment in the arms of her father.

  Alec blacks out until more pain wakes him.

  Carrie has grabbed Alec’s arm. “Stay still. I know how to do this.”

  She pulls his arm straight down hard, popping his shoulder back. He screams and again passes out.

  She says to Alec, as if he were awake, “Well, we know what we have to do now.”

  Alec picks up the car, a four-year-old blue Chevy, at a lot in Flushing. Harvey arranged for the purchase, so Alec knows the engine’s reliable. He and Carrie also accede to Harvey’s insistent advice: to take separate routes, on different subways, Alec to Flushing, Carrie to Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. Where Alec, waiting for her as she comes out of the station—thinking all this subterfuge to have been superfluous—spreads a map out on the hood of the Chevy.

  He and Carrie had talked through the night, after Alec had regained consciousness, remarkably free of pain.

  “It’s one of their favorite things,” she explained. “No mess, no fuss. Just tremendous misery until the shoulder’s popped back in, which is easy enough, if you know what you’re doing.”

  Although he wouldn’t have predicted this, it was now fairly clear, Alec thought, what Phil had in mind, leaving them the way he did. Carrie, on her own, might hate Phil sufficiently to try to send him to a prison cell from the witness stand. It was also the simplest way of regaining custody of her child. But it wasn’t something she’d do, in all probability, at the cost of Alec’s life. So Phil let Alec remain among the living. Killing his own wife, moreover, was never a good risk. Phil had the obvious motivation, to stop her from talking, and no alibi that would stand up. No doubt, he could arrange to be elsewhere at the time she went missing. But who would believe, in any event, that Phil took care of such matters with his own hands?

  Given this standoff, Alec thought, he and Carrie could have stayed in New York, but for one thing. There was absolutely nothing to stop Phil from invading their apartment and beating up both of them whenever he pleased.

  Again, they talked about witness protection. For Alec, Phil’s brutality only strengthened the reasons for putting him in prison and going into such a program with Sarah. It appeared to have the opposite impact on Carrie. She said she simply wanted to flee. And Alec wanted what Carrie wanted. The injury done him would permanently weaken his shoulder. What Phil did to her, short-circuiting her rehab, could trigger the overdose that would end her life.

  On the Bronx street, before getting into the driver’s seat of the car, Alec folds up the map, looks skyward. The sun is blazing, though the air is cool. “We’ll take it in easy stages. Stop outside Boston somewhere.”

  “No,” she says, grabbing the handle to the passenger seat door. “Let’s go straight to Maine.”

  “You can stand that? All that time in the car?”

  “I’ll deal.”

  “You know,” he says over the roof of the car, “unless something changes, I think we’re all right.”

  “All right?” She looks angry and incredulous.

  “I mean, you don’t have to surface. My trial, the criminal case. There’s another witness. They should leave you alone.” Misreading her look, he adds, “Except for the custody proceedings. Which I’ll start as soon as I get back to the city. We will get Sarah back.”

  “Jesus,” she says.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “You still think you can fix everything with court papers?”

  “You have a better idea?”

  Carrie opens the door and gets in. “Yeah,” she says. “Buy a gun.”

  So saying, she slams the door shut.

  Phil’s on the phone in his study when Vito appears in the doorway. Phil waves him forward, finishes up. “What do you have?” Phil asks.

  “Harvey Grand, the gumshoe? Bought a car this morning from a dealer in Flushing.”

  “The dealer, he’s one of ours?”

  “No, but he owes us.”

  “The car wired?”

  “Sorry, boss. We got to this guy too late.”

  “And they’ve skipped. In the car.”

  “Looks like. Should we try to get a tail?”

  “Waste of energy,” Phil says. “In a few days, they’ll write a check, use a Diners Club card, register for a new phone, utilities, something. We’ll find them. No rush. The farther away they are right now, the better.”

  Vito stands there thinking. “You knew they’d skip?”

  “Of course.”

  “You wanted them to?”

  Phil laughs. “Sometimes, Vito, you surprise me.”

  Sarah, bursting into the room, goes directly to her father, leaving the nanny in the doorway. “When’s Mommy coming home?” she wants to be told.

  “Oh, sweetheart! Mommy’s gone on a long trip.”

  “Where?”

  “Y’know, I’m not sure right now. But we were just talking about that, Vito and me. We’ll have word soon.”

  “She go with Alec?”

  “I believe she did.”

  “He’s funny.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “A real scream,” Sarah declares, drawing upon her trove of TV idioms.

  “Also true,” agrees Phil with a grin.

  As Vito heads off, Phil calls him back. “Tonight, we’ll need about five men. The best.”

  Vito again stands motionless. “Carrying?”

  “Whatta you think?” says Phil. I say I want the best, I want them useless?”

  Abigail’s at her desk mid-morning when Sam barges into the Syosset office. “I can’t find Alec,” he says. “Can’t reach him anywhere.”

  She glances at the wall clock. “He might be on a subway.”

  “I’ve been trying him since seven this morning. Office and home.”

  “He could be out of town, Sam.”

  “Not according to the office. Where he’s expected.”

  “Let’s try the office again.”

  “I just did. Third time this morning.”

  Abigail gets up, goes to him, leads him outside into the sun. They stand together in the parking lot. She says, “There’s nothing to be done now, Sam.”

  “I know.”

  “Ridiculous to go to the police. There’s
nothing to tell them, except we’re afraid, and who we’re afraid of.”

  “I know.”

  “And for Alec—we have no idea what we’re stepping into, interfering with.”

  “I know, Abby. But it’s not a wonderful feeling.”

  “Helplessness.”

  “Right. That.”

  “Let’s go in,” she says, wrapping her arms around her. “It’s starting to get cold.”

  “Crazy weather.”

  “Thirties tonight, they’re saying.”

  “Just a front,” he says. “Two days, spring again.”

  “I heard that, right.”

  “So we’re talking about the weather,” he says.

  “Yeah, Sam. Let’s go inside. Bore whoever’s listening.”

  SIXTY-FIVE

  Between Providence and Boston, Alec says, “No one could possibly be following us.”

  “That’s probably right,” Carrie says, taking another peek out the rear window. “So you want to stop? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I could use the sleep.”

  “Sure, let’s stop then.” Her voice is dreamy.

  “You want to go on,” he says.

  “I want… I think you know what I want.”

  He takes his eyes off the road for a second to look at her. “No, I don’t.”

  “Right.”

  He says gently, “What is it, Carrie?”

  She huddles into herself. “I had a bad night too.”

  Phil and his men travel in two black vans. Vito drives one of them with Phil sitting in front. In the second, right behind them, five armed men are crammed in uncomfortably. Everyone wears black gear and leather gloves. A battle unit, thinks Vito. Men trained in actual combat. This is what Vito loves, what he was born to do. Like the good old days, which weren’t that long ago. The days when they clawed back their territory street by street. He’d love to reminisce about that, relive the good times, but Phil’s not talking. In one of his moods. It’s not nerves. Phil gets cold when he thinks about killing people. And Vito suspects Phil is especially cold now, given who’s likely to be on the kill list.

  The night itself is cold, maybe just twenty, twenty-five degrees. Crazy weather. Snow in November, thaw in December, then frigid nights in early spring. Everything’s fucked up, even the weather. It’s keeping the cars off the road, though. The highway is virtually empty. Some sixteen-wheelers—you keep out of their way, let them go by with your headlights shining up their exhausts. Phil wants the heat off, so it’s freezing in the van. But it’s good to be keyed, psyched. Coming back, Vito thinks, we’ll be warm.

  Little John has his own favorite restaurants when dining in New Jersey. He varies the pattern for security purposes, and he expects his principal men to eat with him on these nights.

  Their dinners are convivial. Though there’s good reason to fear Little John, he’s an expansive host who’s easily humored by good food and wine and loud jokes at other people’s expense. Unlike Phil, who limits himself to a dedicated table, Little John prefers commandeering an entire restaurant. Dining out with his crew, he has an extreme antipathy to civilians.

  His new favorite is Buccatoni’s, an upmarket ristorante atop a hill on a twenty-acre plot near Morristown, run by the young chef Nicky Buccatoni and financed by Little John. For their dinner tonight, the New Jersey boss wants something special to honor his guest, Don Giovanni. So Nicky creates a tasting menu of extraordinary delights. Little John is more than pleased: with the meal, with his investment, and, most of all, with the plangent honor of hosting the family’s éminence grise.

  In about a week, Little John will move in on Phil. It will be bloody, but quick, beginning with the assassination of the capo himself. And it will succeed, Little John believes, because of the planning and because all of the other families will step aside. They will do this, because Don Giovanni has given his blessing.

  Little John calls Nicky and his staff out from the kitchen, congratulates them in front of the assemblage and asks his men to comment on the courses they preferred and why. Little John enjoys talking about food. It is, in fact, close to his favorite subject. He suggests they go around the table, with himself going last, and with Don Giovanni choosing the best description.

  The men are uneasy. They’re not used to having a celebrity in their midst, especially an old man who says little and therefore seems all the more judgmental. They’re familiar with Little John’s games and will play along. But this kind of verbal description? It’s designed to make clowns of them, and they know it.

  Joey Sacco leads off. He thinks of himself as a comedian. And he thinks of something clever to say about the gnocchi, so he doesn’t dislike the game as much as the others and begins with a smile on his broad face.

  Which freezes when Phil and his men stomp in, brandishing MP5 submachine guns.

  It is clear what’s happening but still a shock. No wasted moves, no banter, Phil’s people start shooting at once. Little John, Phil’s target, is riddled to death as he attempts to rise from his chair. Some of his group leap up, get gunned down. One almost makes it out of the room before jerking in the air from the impact of volleys from three different weapons. The kitchen staff is slaughtered with the rest. Not a shot is returned. It comes at them too fast. Don Giovanni, allowed to observe nearly to the end, looks Phil straight in the eye and says, “Nephew?” Phil’s response is the rattle of his gun, which turns the old man’s face into chopped meat.

  At the conclusion of the blood bath, only Nicky is left standing. He looks ashen, says nothing, and stares at Phil.

  “Collaterals are unfortunate,” Phil says.

  “Yes,” says Nicky.

  “We’ll let the locals deal with this… carnage. They should be here…. Oh—” Phil glances at his watch. “Five, six minutes. Want a lift?”

  “No, I have my car, thanks,” Nicky says.

  “So you all right?”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Where were you tonight, when all this was happening?”

  “My condo. In town.”

  “That’s for certain?”

  “Yes!”

  “You have someone who can vouch for that?”

  “My friend.”

  “Male, female?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No,” Phil says with an oddly wistful inflection, and opens fire. The first blast goes into Nicky’s gut. When he hits the floor, Phil’s second barrage splatters the chef’s brains on the carpet.

  Phil turns. “Vito!”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “I didn’t like his response.”

  “Yeah. Me neither.”

  Phil recalls Little John’s doodled napkin, appreciates the irony of the sketch. “I think we’ve been here long enough.”

  “Car’s running, boss.”

  SIXTY-SIX

  In the Massachusetts town of Newburyport, Alec and Carrie find a room and crash, sleeping until midmorning. Carrie says at breakfast, “I need to find a meeting.”

  “I’ll wait,” Alec says.

  One call, she finds it, and is back in a little over an hour. On the road by lunchtime, they reach Down East Maine by nightfall.

  Off the highway, on a scenic route, a sign points to a town named Reefer’s Harbor. “Surely,” says Alec, taking that road, “the name of a person, not a crop!”

  “One never knows!” sings Carrie, her voice sounding hopeful.

  The Inn at Reefer’s Harbor has lots of rooms—in fact, all twelve—available. Springtime in Maine? For vacationers, an oxymoron.

  They expect quaint; they get it. Also quiet, salt air, thick mattress, deep sleep. They breakfast at a place called the Acadia Tea Room, a few steps from the inn. Everything commercial is on one side of a narrow street down the middle of the Reefer’s Harbor peninsula. On the other side is the harbor, filled with fishing boats and some pleasure craft, gulls swooping everywhere, as populous as Central Park pigeons. The air has warmed somewhat during the night. On the
dock, a white-haired guy in a Forties suit buys swordfish right off the boats. “For the canneries,” their waitress tells them. She’s a pretty nineteen-year-old; the wood-paneled tea room and its wooden booths, at least a century older.

  “This may be it,” Alec says over coffee. “No one in New York’s ever heard of this place. And it’s close to Augusta and Portland. With a change of name and a manufactured identity, I could fly up on weekends.”

  Carrie gives him a look. She knows the kind of hours he works.

  “Some weekends,” he amends. When her face turns sour, he says, “What? You don’t like it?”

  “What’s not to like? No friends, no lover, no kid.”

  “No drugs.”

  “Ha! Love the irony! Reefer’s Harbor, no drugs.”

  “They’re here, Carrie,” he says, turning serious. “You want ’em, you can find ’em.”

  “I know.”

  “And?”

  “Not for today,” she says.

  “Great.” He smiles. “Let’s find a house.”

  “So Phil can find us.” As if that were the goal.

  “He’s not that good.”

  “Y’know,” she says, “I think you’re wrong. And when he comes, this time, I’m going to be ready for him.”

  “We’re on that again.”

  “We are.”

  “With guns,” he says, “it’s the good guy who gets shot. The amateur.”

  “So let’s turn pro.”

  “We both get guns,” he says dully.

  “Don’t kid yourself, Alec. Phil’s coming. At some point, he’s coming. And when he does, the only thing’s gonna stop him is a bullet in the head.”

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Alec, driving, shifts his glance from the road to the real estate agent, Ariel Huffman, a trim, fiftyish woman with gray eyes and a beak. She looks as at ease with herself as she is with her attire: the sort of colorful, loose-fitting items that can be purchased from an L.L. Bean catalog, and may well have been.

  “I know the normal practice,” Alec says. “Show clients the white elephants first. Maybe, for us, you’d go right to the house you think we’re going to end up taking?”