* * *
Once I leave the club, the dark cloud lifts from my head and I feel as though I’ve regained several years of my life. My feet ache as I lock up the club, slamming the door shut. It’s four in the morning, but the sky is still black. The streets are quiet. In downtown Manhattan, it’s strange. My ears pound with that woh-woh sound echoing inside my head. I stuff the cash from tonight in my jacket and make my way down the street toward the subway.
I need to go home and crash, and then I’ll have to do it all over again, to wake up at around one. Then work again at seven. Every day it’s the same. I kill myself in heels, walking around the club with a permanent headache, so angry that I make my stomach sick.
This wasn’t what I wanted to do with my youth, you know? I get to watch all my friends go to colleges that I can’t afford. They’re all studying and partying, and I can’t even get a boyfriend. Once the guys see where I work and the type of men I have to deal with, they split. Who can blame them? By now, everyone knows that the Crazy Horse is a connected club. Sane people avoid it. The fact that mobsters frequent the club seems to be an attraction for the people who flock here in droves. I don’t understand it. There must be something wrong with their brains.
The streets echo with another person’s footsteps. The weight of them suggests that they belong to a man, and my insides tense. Years of growing up in this city made me develop a sixth sense for trouble, and I feel like tearing down the street in my heels. I’m very aware of the thick wad of cash pressed against my ribs. I could cross the street, and then I’d find out for sure if he was following me. I walk across without even looking for traffic. A quick pair of footsteps behind me makes my heart race as if I just downed a bottle of caffeine pills. I don’t even look behind me. I’m too afraid to. My pace quickens, my heels loud on the sidewalk: clop-clop. He matches mine, and then finally I look behind me and he’s a foot away from me. The air rings with my scream and I tumble forward in surprise. He grabs the back of my neck and my skin screams at the violation. He slams me into the brick wall, and the breath is knocked from my lungs.
Oh fuck. What’s happening?
“Where is it?” he snarls.
I don’t know what he wants. I can’t speak because his hand is still around my throat, and my voice is gone. The brick wall scrapes my face and there’s a pinching pain where his nails dig into my skin.
“Where’s the money?”
His hands grope up my side, and I try to twist away from him. “Get off of me!”
The hand slips inside my jacket and grabs the wad of money. He pauses for a moment and gropes one of my tits. I elbow him hard, vomit rising in my throat. I don’t even see his face as he releases me and sprints down the street.
“NO!”
I take off after him, kicking my heels from my feet as I sprint after the dark, hooded man. Fucking piece of shit. I grab one of my heels in my hands as rage boils inside me. I’m going to use it on him. How dare he grab me like that?
Suddenly a sleek car rolls up next to me. I must look like a maniac, running in the street at this hour with my shoes off.
“Mel, what’s the matter?”
The sound of his voice startles me so much that I almost forget why I’m so pissed off. Tommy looks at me through the rolled-down window, and I feel a surge of triumph. I point toward the rapidly disappearing man.
“Get him!”
Without a word, Tommy floors the gas pedal. The car screams on the pavement, kicking up clouds of dust as he aims it straight for the guy, who sprints harder. It swerves onto the sidewalk, cutting him off as I catch up to them.
The man jumps over the hood, but Tommy gets out and tackles the guy. They fall to the ground with a sickening thud. For a moment I’m actually worried. The thief is a lot bigger. They struggle on the ground and Tommy takes something metallic from his waist—a knife. His right hand makes a violent movement into the thief’s barrel-like chest. He does it at least three of four times. It sounds as if he’s stabbing a melon. Stabbing. The man’s screams quickly fade and Tommy’s blue sleeve streams with dark, red blood. The man’s shirt is soaked with it and his head falls to the floor, blood bubbling from his lips.
God! What did he—what did he do?
Tommy wrenches it out of the man’s side: a knife with something that looks like jam all over it, but of course it’s not strawberry jam. It’s blood. It’s fucking blood, and the man’s not moving anymore.
“What did he do, rob you?” he asks in a conversational tone, as if we were sitting across from each other at dinner. “Ah, found it.” He finds the stack of cash near the man’s feet.
My lungs are too tight and I feel as if I’m going to faint. The man—he’s not moving. What just happened? Tommy wipes the blade clean on the man’s trousers and takes the cash with his dripping hands.
He killed him with that knife. He stabbed him to death. I didn’t want that. I didn’t ask him to do that.
Tommy turns to me with a grin. “Come here, hon. It’s all right. You’re lucky I was watching over you.”
Lucky?
“Get away from me!”
My foot slips on something as I take off in the other direction, tears streaming down my face. Why couldn’t I just go home and cut my losses? The man—his face, the gashes on his chest, and the way Tommy sunk the blade right underneath his ribs, the horrible, gurgling sound he made. I’ve just witnessed a murder. Holy shit.
I stop to throw up on the sidewalk, my guts heaving over and over. What should I do? Should I call the police?
And risk the same thing happening to me once he finds out I ratted on him?
I take the subway home in a sort of numb shock. Horror reverberates through me until I shut it down, refusing to believe anything happened.
“You’re bleeding.”
A cop talks to me as I take my stop. I can barely think with all the blood rushing to my brain. Can he see the guilt on my face? He frowns at me. Oh fuck. He already knows. Someone saw and told the cops that I was on the subway.
“What?”
“You’re bleeding.”
Did some of the man’s blood get on me? No, that’s impossible. Still, I look at my hands. They’re bare. My face tickles with something and I swipe at it. Blood smears all over my fingers.
“Did you lose your shoes?”
I look down at my dirty bare feet and feel another stab of anxiety.
Just get out of here.
“Um, yeah.”
I move past him, hoping that he thinks I’m some sort of harmless junkie and not an accomplice to murder, which is what I really am.
What do I do?
I limp up the steps out of the subway, my heart still hammering with the cop encounter. It’s so late and I’m fucking tired. I don’t really think all of that happened anyway. There’s just no way it did. This is all some crazy, bizarre dream because I don’t get enough sleep, that’s all.
A lump the size of a tennis ball swells in my throat when I see his car, parked just outside my brownstone.
He followed me here? Shit! What if he’s here to silence me?
“Melanie.”
My ragged scream surprises even me, and a pair of hands take my shoulders and give me a little shake. It’s Tommy. His fingers bite into my shoulders and my screams give way to panicked breaths.
“Maddon, you’re hurt. What did that asshole do to you?”
I cringe as he lifts his hands to my head, but he’s surprisingly gentle. It’s strange to see his eyes knitted with concern when only a half hour ago they were blank while he stabbed someone to death. Fingers touch the wound on my face as he assesses it.
“Let go of me!”
Tommy’s eyes are vivid against the dark. The Adam’s apple sticking from his throat bobs a little and he takes his hands away from my face. His voice drops even lower. “Why did you run away from me?”
I open my mouth to scream for help, but all I manage is a weak little whimper. A line of nausea pours in my mouth
.
“Oh no, no, no. Don’t be like that.”
“L-like what?”
“Don’t be afraid of me.” He rubs my shoulder, which is knotted like a rock. “I don’t want you to be like the others.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind,” I say in a trembling voice. “You killed that guy when anyone could have seen us—”
“But nobody saw us. I’m a professional, you know.”
A wide smile spreads over his face, and a flash of anger momentarily shoves aside my fear.
“That’s not the fucking point!”
“It’s not?” he says, moving in closer. “Then what is it, sweetie?”
That fucking name.
“You’re crazy. You killed a man who—”
“—stole from us,” he interjects in a hard voice. “I promise you, he knew what would happen. He got what was coming to him, and you got your money back.”
“I don’t want to be involved in this shit!”
My yells ring down the street, and in the distance I see someone peek their head out of their brownstone. His face tightens and he grabs my elbow none too gently, dragging me to the side of the house. The porch light from my brownstone flicks on, and I flinch from the suddenly bright glare. He utters a swear and drags us into the shadows.
It scares me, seeing his face all half-hidden like that. The gravelly, rough edge in his voice makes my skin cold.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart, but you are involved. Whether you like it or not.”
“But—!”
“Enough,” he says in a suddenly tense voice. “Don’t fucking talk about it here.”
I flinch from the sound of his voice, and his fingers turn my jaw so that I’m facing him.
“I—I swear I won’t. Please, just don’t—don’t hurt me!”
I don’t even care about the pathetic noises I make. His eyes blaze at me, and he leans forward almost as if he’s going to kiss me. His fingers scorch my skin, like flesh on flame. It’s as though I’m a puppet in his complete control.
“The more you beg me, the more I want to.”
Jesus. What the hell is wrong with him?
It seems like a millennium before Tommy finally backs away from me, his face taut with rage. He reaches inside his jacket and pulls out the envelope of cash, giving it back to me roughly. Then he bends down and straightens, my shoes dangling from his fingers.
“Th-thanks.”
I reach out for them, but he pulls them just out of my reach with a small grin. That mischievous look is back on his face.
“Go out with me Saturday night.”
My jaw drops. He can’t seriously think I’d have a remote interest in him, especially after tonight.
“Tommy, please.”
I lunge for my shoes and he finally lets me take them.
“Please what?” His arms cross over his chest, and I notice the bloodstains on his sleeves.
“You killed him.”
“Yes, I did.”
It couldn’t be plainer that he doesn’t give a shit.
“He knew what would happen if he was caught.”
“You didn’t have to do it!”
“I know I didn’t,” he says as if I thanked him. “I wanted to.”
The shadows on his face move, reminding me of spiders.
“What did you do with him?” I can’t even say it. What did you do with his body?
“Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” He slowly uncrosses his arms and grabs my arm. “Melanie, you need to keep this to yourself. Don’t tell your dad, your fucking girlfriends, no one. Understand?”
Like I’d tell anyone. I wrench my arm out of his grasp, my hands shaking slightly. “I won’t.”
The oily tone returns to his voice. “You know, some would say you owed me a favor.”
I turn my back on him.
“Hey.”
Something in his voice makes me turn around. Maybe it’s a small twinge of whatever it was that drove him to stab someone to death tonight.
I turn around and a slow smile spreads on his face. “You didn’t answer my question about Saturday.”
Part of me wants to say yes, just to appease whatever crush this guy thinks he has on me. Saying yes could be dangerous. He’ll want more. They always want more. Although Tommy has never once insulted me for turning him down, pressure builds inside my stomach and my heart races. The more I reject him, the angrier he’ll get. Right? The thought of being alone with him terrifies me. I won’t be able to say no to whatever he’ll want.
I can’t.
“Sorry, Tommy. The answer is still no.”
His face is frozen in that pleasant expression. You would never guess that I just rejected him.
“Good night then.”
* * *
Blood. Screaming. Frightening images cycle in front of my eyes as I toss in bed. I just can’t get them out of my head, and my heart flutters and squeezes painfully when I think about the stabbing sounds the knife made. The cover is held tight over my head as I curl into a ball, shaking.
What if he’s still out there, watching me?
I’m too terrified to look.
Jack Vittorio, the head of the family, told me to call him if I ever had any problems. God, I can just imagine that conversation.
“One of your men killed a guy who robbed me.”
“…So?”
Yeah, that’s probably what he’d say.
I manage a small laugh and then I feel sickened with myself. Shouldn’t I be in hysterics about what happened last night? Maybe I’ve just been around this shit for too long.
That disturbs me. It’s almost as if I’m becoming one of them.
I’m Portuguese. My whole family is. Dad emigrated from Portugal when he was three with his six siblings, and Mom when she was a teenager. I inherited my curly hair from her and my short stature from both. I always hated it, being shorter than everyone else with a full head of curly black hair, but we moved to a neighborhood where everyone down the block was Portuguese. All the stores were Portuguese and everyone spoke Portuguese, and after eighteen years of this I was ready to experience something different.
I wanted to be the first in our family to go to college. I was going to become a doctor, because I came from a family of waiters and maids, and I didn’t want the same thing for my future. Years of watching my mother and father break their backs all day made me vow to strive for something greater, but they didn’t expect much from me. I did. I knew I could do whatever I wanted.
Just like my dad thought he knew he could run a restaurant.
We all know how that ended.
Dad was old, and I didn’t want to see him struggle with standing for over eight hours in the club, so I took over the management. I had to take care of my dad. He and I have a good relationship, and I love him more than I love my own dreams.
I guess trying to escape your fate is futile.
Sometimes, when I’m in bed, I cry myself to sleep about it. The thought of never going to college and being trapped in this life forever suffocates me. I have too much ambition to be stuck here forever.
“Coffee?”
My dad sits at the small kitchen table, watching me with wrinkled eyes as I shuffle into the kitchen. It’s three o’ clock in the afternoon. Despite the fact that I was dead tired, it took hours to fall asleep. I kept thinking of Tommy, and wondered what happened to the body and whether I’d be hauled in for questioning any second. I half expect a pair of cops to kick down my door at any second, guns aloft, and scream, “FREEZE!”
“Yeah,” I croak.
I take the cup of coffee and wrench open the fridge, only to find it bare. No milk. Fuck’s sake. I work such long hours at the club, the least they could do is keep it stocked.
Mom walks in, looking aghast. “Melanie, you look so pale. Did you eat yet?”
“No, Mom.”
“Do you want me to make you something?”
“Um—it’s okay.”
She
peers at me for a few seconds and then immediately bustles to the kitchen, pushing me aside to make me—breakfast. “Want some chorizo?”
“Yeah, all right.”
The sausage hisses in the pan as I slump down on the kitchen table across from Dad, fingers white around my mug of coffee.
“Everything okay at the club?”
I look into my Dad’s pinched eyes and give him a reassuring smile. He’s always worried about me. He has no idea how bad it is, but he always tells me how guilty he feels for letting me work in the club. We can’t just sell it now that we’re partners with the fucking Mafia, so I’m in it for the long haul because I don’t trust anyone enough to leave the business to.
But he really has no fucking idea how dangerous these people are.
“Fine.”
“Do you ever meet anyone at the club?” My mother’s voice suddenly pipes up.
I raise my head blearily. “What do you mean?”
She gives me a furtive smile. “You meet any nice boys? Portuguese boys?” she adds hopefully.
I laugh humorlessly. If only they knew the sort of men who were interested in me. “I don’t want to date a Portuguese guy.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
I shrug. I really don’t want to date ethnic guys, even if they’re from my own culture. They’re always overly traditional and religious, and I’m not. Nope, just give me a run-of-the-mill mixed American guy.
Tommy’s face burns in my head and I bite my lip.
Not him.
Plus, it’s always awkward to date men when you live at home. My parents always want to know where the hell I am, even though I’m twenty-two. It’s a Portuguese thing. Daughters never really get free rein. I’ve never stayed over at a guy’s house for that reason, and I’m running out of believable lies to tell my mother why I’m out late. I just don’t need my parents to know about my sex life. I love them, even though they make me feel stifled sometimes. I’m definitely ready to move out and have my own independence, but I don’t know when the hell that’ll be. It’s not as if I’m really making any money for myself. It’s all for them.
A swell of sadness rises in my throat as Mom puts the plate of chorizo and papo secos in front of me, and I take a small piece of the red sausage and the spiciness burns my tongue.
His Witness Page 3
