“Laura,” Montana barked. “Come on. Do you need help?”
She’d already opened the door. She held Rickie, struggling, in her arms. “Get Trace,” she said. “And the boxes.”
He sprinted to the Ford, snatched up Trace, and carried him, kicking and hitting, to the backseat of the Bronco.
“Get the boxes!” she cried. “We’ve got to have them.”
“We haven’t got time,” he snapped. “Get in and shut the door.” He didn’t think he’d see that white truck swinging around the corner, but he didn’t want to take the chance.
“We need them.” She had a wild, stubborn light in her eyes. “I’ll load them myself, dammit.” She was already halfway out of the Bronco.
Montana shoved Trace into the backseat, none too gently, and the boy screamed in frightened outrage. Montana could have gladly flung Laura in beside him.
But she was already in the van, kneeling on the seat, yanking boxes from out of the back and piling them beside her. She did it so frantically that boxes fell, tumbling into the street. One came open and spilled the children’s videos onto the packed snow.
“Get in the damn car,” Montana snarled at her. “Or I’ll throw you in.”
She shot him a rebellious glance and went on grabbing boxes from the back. The broken plaque of Daffy Duck clattered to the street beside the videotapes.
“They need their things,” she insisted. “I want all their things.”
She was crazed, a woman possessed, but Montana knew she meant it; she wasn’t going to go without the twins’ possessions. In the meantime Jefferson was probably bleeding to death, and God only knew where the white truck was.
“Goddamnit, help him. Try to stop the bleeding,” he ordered.
Laura seized an armload of boxes, staggered back to the Bronco, and threw them inside. She started for the van again.
Montana blocked her way. “Help Jefferson.”
She tried to push past him. “We need their things!” she insisted. “They have to have their things.”
“Help Jefferson,” he said. “I’ll get their damn things.”
She looked at him with disbelief but backed toward the Bronco.
“Help him!” Montana said, furious.
She whirled and ran to the Bronco, climbing in beside Jefferson.
“You,” Montana said, turning to the driver. “Help me.”
“What is this?” the driver demanded. “Kids? What—?”
“Load the Bronco,” Montana said with such ferocity that the driver blanched and hurried to the van.
Together they loaded the back of the Bronco, swiftly and haphazardly.
The driver had two clean white shirts in a clear plastic laundry bag hanging in the back. Montana saw Laura seize one and wad it into a makeshift compress. When she peeled back Jefferson’s bloody coat and saw the wound gaping in his shoulder, she looked faint.
But she hung onto herself. She pressed the cloth against the wound and held it fast.
Montana shoved a last armload of boxes into the back of the Bronco and slammed the door shut. There was no more room, even though boxes were still piled in the back of the van, and the videos and the broken Daffy still lay in the snow.
“There’s more,” Laura protested.
“That’s enough.” His jaw clenched, he headed for the driver’s seat. “We’re getting the hell out of here.”
“What about my car?” the driver demanded. “How do I get my car back?”
“You’ll get it. But don’t call the police. Just get out of here. Before you get hurt. I repeat: Don’t call the police.”
Montana got in and slammed the door. He thrust the key in the ignition, put the car in gear, and hit the accelerator. The tires shrieked against the packed snow, and the Bronco shot down the street breaking the speed limit.
“I’m all right,” he heard Jefferson say to Laura. “Climb in back with the kids.”
“No. Hold still,” Laura said. “Don’t move.”
Rickie and Trace were wailing, and Trace kicked hard at the back of the driver’s seat.
“Help the kids,” Jefferson said.
“Shh,” said Laura. “Shhhh.”
Montana made up the route as he went along, and he tried to make their flight as tricky as a fox’s. His heart beat like a jackhammer in his chest.
“Where are we going?” Laura asked over the twins’ crying. Their sobs were lower now, as if they were finally exhausting themselves.
“Get Jefferson to a doctor,” Montana said, not taking his eyes from the road.
“Where’s the nearest emergency ward?”
“No,” Montana said. “I don’t want any admission records. We were set up. We’ve got to run.”
“But Jefferson,” she protested. “Can he hang on?”
Jefferson, sitting between them, sagged forward, then fell back heavily against the seat. He flinched with pain. “I can hang on,” he said. “He’s right. We were set up.”
Montana gave Laura a sidelong glance. Her face was white, but her eyes were as alert as a wary animal’s.
“What do you mean, set up?” she asked.
“I mean set up,” Montana said with bitterness. “Somebody leaked word we’d be at Valley Hope. That’s the only way this could happen. Jesus.”
“We walked right into it,” Jefferson said, grimacing. “Laura, you got any more shirts back there? I think I bled through this one.”
“Oh, God, yes, yes,” she said. Montana stole another glimpse at her. She looked as if she was going to cry, but she didn’t. She pulled the shirt off the hanger, folded it into a tight square, and pressed it against Jefferson’s shoulder. The white material reddened immediately.
Montana’s mind raced, considering options.
“I know a doctor, a retired doctor in Queens,” he told Jefferson. “I’ll take you there.”
Jefferson nodded and closed his eyes.
“How do you know the doctor’s home?” Laura asked.
“He’s always home,” Montana snapped. “He’s too old to go out.”
“There’s a car phone back here,” she said. “We could call.”
Montana almost bowed his head to give thanks. For a moment he was in love with her, her and the divine gift of the telephone.
He glanced at the mirror. Rickie was slumped, curled into one corner and whimpering, rubbing his eyes. He seemed spent and was perhaps crying himself to sleep.
Trace sat in the opposite corner, his knees up, his face hidden, his fingers fluttering in a frantic dance over his cheeks and lips. He banged his head against the backseat, and between sobs he muttered something unintelligible.
Montana took a deep breath. “Okay,” he said, turning his gaze back to the snowy highway that led back to Queens. “Can you reach the phone?”
“Yes,” Laura said. Keeping the compress against Jefferson’s shoulder, she leaned over the backseat.
“I’ll give you the number,” Montana said. “Dial it. When he answers, tell him Mick Montana needs him. Then hand me the phone.”
He told her the number, which he still knew by heart.
Laura pushed the buttons, then waited. “He doesn’t answer,” she said. “It’s rung nine rings.”
“It takes him time to get to the phone,” Montana said.
“Ten rings,” said Laura, looking worried.
“Great,” Jefferson said from between his teeth. “For a doctor, I get a two-thousand-year-old man. He’ll give me a transfusion of dinosaur blood.”
At that moment, Laura said, “Doctor? Mick Montana wants to talk to you.”
She handed the phone to Montana, then put both hands on Jefferson’s compress. “Stay still,” she said. “Easy.”
Jefferson closed his eyes more tightly, then relaxed. He had sunken into unconsciousness.
Dr. Marco DeMario was a widower, eighty-two years old. He lived in a tall, narrow house in a neighborhood that had been elegant forty years ago, but no longer was.
The hous
e’s peeling white facade looked dirty against the pristine brightness of the snow. The evergreen hedge that enclosed the small yard had run wild, untrimmed for years.
Montana pulled the Bronco into the drive and into DeMario’s open garage. He’d told DeMario that they’d bring Jefferson in through the back door.
The boys were both asleep in their separate corners of the backseat. Montana was strong, but Jefferson was a huge man, and Laura had to help half carry, half drag him up the back stairs of the old house.
At every step Laura flinched, fearing they were hurting him more. She’d wrapped the cleaner’s bag over his shoulder to try to keep from leaving a trail of blood.
Montana rang the bell, supporting Jefferson against his shoulder like a man holding up a drunk.
Laura was surprised at how quickly the back door swung open. DeMario must have been watching for them.
“Get him up on the counter, close to the sink,” DeMario said in his creaking voice. “It’s going to be messy.”
“There’s a lot of blood,” Montana said.
An understatement, Laura thought, dazed. When Trace’s cheek had been grazed, her coat lapel had been spattered with blood. Now the shoulder and front of her coat were smeared and glistening with it. Montana’s topcoat was almost as bad.
DeMario bent over Jefferson and expertly stripped away the coat and shirt from the wound. He used what might have been a scalpel, or for all Laura knew, an old-fashioned straight-edged razor.
DeMario was like his house, tall, lean, and unkempt. A shock of thin white hair hung over his brow, and his face was a collection of wrinkles. But behind his trifocal glasses, his eyes were black and bright.
Delicately he peeled the last of the shirt away from the wound, and Laura had to look away. She hated herself for feeling queasy, but she did.
“It’s veinous blood,” she heard DeMario say. “No arteries hit.”
“Good,” said Montana.
“I got a bottle of ether on that counter,” DeMario said. “Old as hell, but it’ll do. Saturate that rag with it. Don’t put it over his face until I tell you.”
“Ether?” Laura said, raising her eyes. “Isn’t that awfully—primitive?”
“Hell,” DeMario said, “I’ve worked under worse conditions. I followed General George S. Patton across half of Africa and a damn lot of Europe. Operated eighteen hours a day sometimes. The wounded were stacked up like cordwood. Hmmph. World War Two—we won that son of a bitch.”
Laura could think of no answer. She stared numbly at DeMario’s ancient instruments, ranged on an old kitchen cart. They twinkled in the light spilling from the dusty light fixture overhead.
“You can help him?” Montana asked.
“Hell, yes,” DeMario said. “I mean, it isn’t gonna be pretty. Just get the lead out and sew up the holes. I could do it in my sleep. In my day, we didn’t worry about the cosmetic aspects.”
He gave Laura a sharp look. “You wouldn’t happen to be a nurse?”
“No,” she managed to say. “A teacher.”
“Well, if this is going to make you faint or some damn thing, you should leave. Mick, you stay. I need help here.”
He picked up something that looked like a torture instrument and began to probe the torn flesh.
“Laura,” Montana said with surprising gentleness, “why don’t you wait in the van. Let the kids sleep. I’ll help you bring them in when it’s over.”
Gratefully she turned away and left through the back door. She saw that the plastic bag hadn’t done its job. Drops of Jefferson’s blood spotted the unpainted boards of the glassed-in back porch.
But the snow still fell thickly, and the trail of blood across the yard was already disappearing under a mantle of white.
Montana had left the garage door open, the Bronco’s heater was on, and the inside of the car was warm. She got into the backseat again, careful not to wake the boys.
She was exhausted but didn’t know if she’d ever sleep again. When she closed her eyes, nightmare images danced in her mind: bloody blood, and more blood—was there no end to it?
At last Montana appeared and opened the door. Cold flooded into the car.
She blinked at him. The sky was a dark cloudy gray behind him. “Is it over?” she asked, trying to read his face. She kept her voice low so as not to wake the boys.
He nodded. “It’s over. Let’s bring the kids inside.”
“Is he all right? Jefferson?”
“He’ll be fine. We stay here tonight.”
“Here?” she asked, startled. “Is it safe?”
“It has to be. Jefferson needs to rest. I don’t want to leave him. When we move on, we’re going to need him.”
“When we move on?” she asked. “To where?”
For a moment his eyes held hers. “I don’t know, but it had better be good. Let’s get the kids inside. I’ve got to dump this car. It’s hot.”
“But the driver,” she said. “You told him not to call the police.”
“That won’t stop him. I’ve got to get rid of it.”
“But—” she said.
“Trust me,” he said.
“But how—?”
“When I get back, we’ll talk. I promise. Now let’s get the kids inside. Will you be all right alone with them for a while? Marco’s got to go on an errand for us.”
He gathered Trace into his arms, lifted him. She nodded. She slipped her arms around Rickie. Following Montana, she carried the boy in the back way.
“I don’t know what sort of mood they’re going to be in when they wake up,” she said to Montana. Rickie stirred in her arms and rubbed his cheek.
“Does DeMario—” she groped for words“—does he know about the twins? Will he understand?”
“He knows,” Montana said. “He’ll understand. He’s seen it all.”
“I thought I’d seen it all,” said Marco DeMario, crossing his thin arms. “But I’ve never seen this. I’ve read about it. Heard about it. Never seen it.”
He nodded at the twins. They sat quietly on the worn living room rug.
It was as if Valley Hope was only a fading dream to them. They played with total absorption, lost in a game of their own devising. DeMario had given them each an old quart jar, filled to the brim with pennies. He’d returned from the mysterious short trip he’d taken for Montana. He offered no explanation of where he’d been or what he’d done, and Laura didn’t ask him.
The twins looked at the coins one by one, saying the dates and adding them up as they went.
“1962,” said Trace.
“Three million and eight,” Rickie answered without hesitation. He selected a penny. “1991,” he said.
“Three million, one thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine,” Trace answered. “1936.”
Rickie immediately answered, “Forty-four,” which both of them found inexplicably funny.
“They just lost me,” DeMario said, peering at them as if they were as exotic as unicorns. “Did they just suddenly switch to a square root? I believe they did.”
Laura shrugged, not knowing. She wasn’t thinking about numbers. She was worried about Montana, who’d been gone for hours.
“By criminy, I think they did,” DeMario said, almost cackling. “Pulled a square root out of thin air—just like that. Real idiot savants. Wise fools.”
Laura gave him a feeble smile. People didn’t call them “idiot savants” or “wise fools” these days. But she didn’t want to correct DeMario. He had been too kind.
“Mick’s nephew,” DeMario said with a sage shake of his head. “Joey, in Bellevue. He’s worse off than these boys. A lot worse off. These kids are much luckier.”
At the moment she considered the boys’ luck to be in very short supply, indeed. “They can read and write,” she said. “But they’re not always cooperative. They can dress themselves. They’ve come a long way.”
“Amazing,” DeMario said, tenting his thin fingers.
His hands, she noticed
, had a marked tremor; they quivered constantly and sometimes twitched. It seemed impossible that such trembling hands could have operated on Jefferson only a few hours ago.
But although his hands quavered, his mind was steady and sharp. He saw the direction of her gaze. He held out his right hand. It fluttered delicately, like a moth trying to hold a stationary position in the air.
“You’re wondering how a shaky man can do surgery. It’s simple. I had a shot of hooch before you showed up. I learned that following Patton. Not a good trick. But sometimes a necessary one.”
“I—thought maybe it had just been a long day for you,” she said. “We’ve put you through a lot.”
“At my age, I’m glad to be put through anything besides the home for old poots.”
“You took us in,” she said. “People are after us. Aren’t you scared?”
“Of what? Dying before my time?”
She gazed somberly at the twins, intent on their game of pennies and numbers. Then she turned to face DeMario. “I don’t want for us to put you at risk.”
His face showed no emotion. Behind his trifocals, his eyes were black as Montana’s.
“Mick’ll cover his tracks,” he said. “He’s a smart one.” He tapped his temple with one finger. “His mind is never la dolce far niente. You know what that means?”
“No,” she said, “I don’t know Italian.”
He tapped his temple again. “His brain is never in a state of happy idleness. That’s his curse. That’s his gift. He’s always thinking.”
She studied the old man and thought he must have been handsome once, tall, lean, with such snapping black eyes, such an intelligent face. Age had not made him ugly, but it had sapped him, made him look frail in spite of his spirit.
“Mick,” she said hesitantly. The name felt strange on her lips. “You’ve known him a long time?”
DeMario nodded. “Since he was a bare-ass baby. Excuse my French.”
Laura almost smiled. It was impossible to think of Montana as an infant.
DeMario nodded. “He was a serious kid. But funny. I know that sounds like a contradiction in terms. But he was. Serious. And funny. Marched to a different drummer.”
She wondered how DeMario knew him so well. “Are you related?”
“Naw,” said DeMario. “He used to hang around with my grandson. We were pretty much raising him. His mother was divorced. It wasn’t her fault. She ended up living with us. She and Mike. Mike was the grandson. Mike and Mick. Mick and Mike. The M and M’s we used to call them.”
See How They Run Page 10
