Film Strip

by Nancy Bartholomew

  The car was heading away from the Strip, I could see that much. We were moving out toward the flat farmland that rimmed the rest of the Panhandle, spreading its way back into South Georgia. There were miles and miles of deserted roads and small towns, sinkholes and briny marshes that could swallow bodies without any trace. My stomach turned and flipped as we bounced over potholes. Packy Cozzone didn’t seem to care that we could see outside the car window and knew where he was taking us.

  “Do you know what it’s like to be led off in handcuffs to the nuthouse?” he said softly.

  I stared back at him, tossing my head and trying to look at him with disdain. “I imagine it was just terrible,” I said. “But of course, you can understand our position and see why it was necessary.”

  Packy’s eyebrows rose into a shocked peak. “Understand? The fuck I do.”

  Francis nodded. “What else could we do? You had us in a bind. In New York, we might’ve handled this differently, in a more, shall we say, civilized manner. But here in the boonies, we gotta improvise.”

  Packy looked dumbfounded, as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “After all,” I said, “we don’t know your organization that well. We didn’t know you weren’t going to try and hit us right there on the deck of Ernie’s. You show up with a couple of armed morons. Maybe you were thinking that the best defense would be a good offense. I mean”—here I lied outright—“you guys aren’t stupid, are you?”

  Packy was in a bind. To deny that he’d thought about killing us would make him look like a fool; to admit to it made anything we did to protect ourselves fair game. He said nothing.

  “I didn’t think you were dumb,” I said. “That’s why I called in a favor. See, Little Moose here, he said if you tried anything, he wanted to kill you. But I knew our two families wouldn’t want a war on their hands, not at a time like this.” I leaned back and tried to look like Packy should get what I was talking about. I looked like we all knew the true story. Packy couldn’t stand that. He definitely didn’t want to look like he didn’t know what was going on between our two syndicates.

  “Well, despite that,” he said, “you handled it all wrong. You didn’t need to disgrace me in front of my compatriots.” The two goons stifled smiles.

  “Better that than dead,” Francis added.

  Packy shrugged, possibly thinking that dead would’ve saved his reputation, maybe even enlarged it.

  I played the trump card again. “Big Moose sure isn’t gonna like this,” I said. “You hurt us, and there goes the truce.” I shook my head and looked over at Francis. “In light of what Big Moose was planning, I’d say you haven’t talked this over with the higher-ups in your organization. Maybe they don’t trust you with all the details, or maybe they thought you knew. That’s why we didn’t say too much at Ernie’s. That’s why we had to deal with you as we did.”

  Packy sniffed and looked from one goon to the other. “Hand me the phone,” he commanded. He laid his gun down on the seat next to him and took the cell phone. I was figuring my odds if I made a grab for it, while Packy dialed.

  “I’m checking you out,” he said. “You’d better not be shitting me, ’cause if you are…” His voice trailed off and he waited for someone to answer on the other end.

  “Hey!” he called out. “That you?” He waited a second then banged the phone against his open palm. He brought it up to his ear again and yelled, “It’s Packy! Who’s this?” There was a brief pause as Packy listened, a frustrated look on his face. “Dickie, I’m getting every third word you say. I’m in the middle of fucking nowhere. I’m losing my freakin’ battery. Just tell me one thing, here. Have we got something going on with the Lavotini syndicate pertaining to Florida? Don’t be specific, just yes or no.” Packy listened, smacked the phone again, and looked at it in disgust. “Did you say yes, Dickie?”

  He pressed the phone up against his ear, then pulled it back quickly as it began to emit a high-pitched squeal. “Shit!” he swore. He looked at his two muscleheads. “We can’t take no chances. Turn off on that dirt road and stop the car.”

  He waited until the car stopped; then he leaned forward, picking up his gun as he did so.

  “Maybe our families got something going on, maybe they don’t. Whatever.” He shrugged and brought the gun up level with my chest. “I can’t let you two off scot-free for getting me locked up in the nuthouse.” There was an ominous silence as the two men on either side of Packy slowly reached inside their jacket pockets and brought out their weapons.

  “This is the end of the road,” Packy said. “Open the door and step outside.”

  I knew I was going to be sick. The bile rose up inside my throat and I felt my stomach heave. We were going to die on a dusty back road in rural Florida. The way things were going, no one would find us. Years from now they’d find our skeletal remains. We’d be identified by our dental records, our bodies eaten away by maggots and buzzards. The image terrified me.

  Francis hobbled out of the car, pitched forward, and fell against me. Packy watched the entire scene from the cool darkness of the backseat, his gun still level with my heart.

  “Here’s how it’s gonna go,” he said calmly. “I’m gonna leave you two here, out in the hot sun, your skin cooking in the heat.”

  I was surveying the flat terrain and deciding we didn’t have a hope in hell of running, especially not Francis. We were dead meat. I wanted to cry with the sheer frustration and fear of it all.

  “You’re gonna feel what I felt,” he said. “And then you’re gonna remember that you don’t disrespect a Cozzone. If our two families are going to work together, then you gotta not get carried away with the size of your syndicate. Show a little respect. Hopefully, we can both learn from this. Have a nice day.”

  I braced myself, squeezing my eyes shut, and reaching out to grab Francis’s arm. It was coming. I waited. The engine revved, the door slammed shut, and to my immense surprise, Packy Cozzone and his idiots drove away.

  “Jesus, Mother Mary, and all the saints,” I said. “He didn’t kill us.”

  Francis took a deep, slow breath. “Get me out of these ropes,” he said. “And let’s get the hell out of here.”

  My hands shook as I untied him. I kept thinking over and over, “I could be dead. He could’ve killed us.” Francis must’ve been thinking the same thing, because his entire body shook with a fine tremor as I worked to undo him.

  “All right,” he said when I’d finished. “Let’s get going.” The sun beat down on our heads, and sweat was rolling down the sides of our faces. We were in the middle of nowhere and I had no idea how to get home.

  Francis didn’t seem to care. He put one foot in front of the other and started off at a brisk pace, cresting the edge of the dirt road and turning left out on to the macadam two-lane.

  “Francis, how do you know this is the right way?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “We’re walking East; eventually we’ll turn South. If we were to keep on walking, we’d hit the ocean.”

  My brother the Boy Scout. Of course he was right. I glanced up at the sun and saw it had drifted slightly past dead center and was now marking our course. I looked over at Francis, taking a reading of his emotions. His face was an expressionless blank of bruises and tiny cuts. He’d gone somewhere deep inside himself and was now on survival mode. This was just the way he always reacted when things went wrong. He sealed his feelings off and kept on going, doing the next logical step to bring the situation to a resolution. He’d done it when his wife left and he was doing it now, with me, moments after we’d both thought we were about to die.

  I reached out and touched his arm, making him look over at me. “I’m sorry about all this, Francis,” I said. “I really am sorry.”

  Francis laughed, an unamused chuckle that bounced off the road’s surface and echoed into the still summer heat.

  “Sierra, shit happens. He caught me sleeping, literally. I was asleep on the sofa and hung over. Life’s
lessons learned.” He sighed and continued to plod relentlessly forward. The heat made the road shimmer. I couldn’t tell how far we’d have to walk before we found a phone and could call someone.

  “I know shit happens, Francis,” I said, “but it’s all right to have feelings about it.”

  Francis laughed again, louder. “You damn women are all alike. Feelings! God damn, Sierra, when are you going to grow up? Feelings don’t get you shit. It doesn’t change anything. Feelings don’t undo what’s happened or take it all back. Feelings just get in the way of moving on.”

  I sighed. He wasn’t just talking about now. He was back then, thinking about the day Lois left and took every stick of furniture in their tiny row house, leaving Francis with nothing but a smashed wedding picture in a shiny brass frame.

  “Maybe not, Francis. Maybe feelings don’t do anything but keep you from falling over dead of a heart attack. But all’s I know is, if you walk around trying to stuff them, you’ll explode. You won’t make good decisions and you’ll wind up bitter and alone.”

  “And that would be a problem for who, Sierra?”

  “You, Francis, and all the people who love you and have to watch you live like that.”

  The conversation was veering into uncharted territory. Francis had never responded well to this kind of thing and there wasn’t much of a chance that he’d hear me now.

  “I didn’t realize you and Ma were having such a hard time, watching me waste my life in bitter solitude. See, I was figuring you’d know that being alone beats the hell out of the alternative. What? I could be back with Lois? And walk around knowing she’s flat on her back for any of my acquaintances low enough to take her up on her offers? Then I suppose you think I should walk around feeling all that? Right? Yeah, that’s a real heart-attack preventative.”

  It was hopeless. “No, Francis, what I’m saying is, it’s okay to admit that you hurt, or that you’re scared. You share that with another human being and it lightens your load.”

  Francis stopped and turned to look at me. “Sierra, we nearly got our asses blown away back there. You want me to sit here and tell you how scared I was? You want me to tell you I nearly shit my pants knowing my little sister was going to get her brains blown out and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it? All right, there! That’s how I feel! Does that make you feel better? ’Cause it don’t do jack shit for me.”

  His face was scarlet with the heat and pain. He still trembled, his hands shaking as he waved them in the air, uncontrollably angry. I reached out and grabbed his arms, holding them tightly as I stepped into him.

  “Francis, all’s I’m saying is that I love you and I’m on your team, even when the shit hits the fan. It’s hard to love a stone statue, Francis. Perfection is even harder to deal with. I like you human. You’re one of my biggest heroes, you idiot, can’t you see that? Can’t you see that all I want is to be okay in your eyes? Can’t you see I’d like to be there for you sometimes, instead of you always cleaning up my messes?”

  His eyes softened a very little bit. “What are you talking about, okay in my eyes? Sierra, why do you think I gotta take such good care of you? You think I’d get my ass beat for someone I didn’t care about?”

  “No, I think you got your ass beat ’cause you were asleep on the job.” I smirked at him and he shoved me with his elbow, forcing me off of the road and into the drainage ditch.

  “I’m telling Ma,” I yelled.

  Francis reached in his pocket and flipped me a quarter. “Call her, sissy,” he said. “And while you’re at it, order me a pizza and a large pitcher of beer.”

  He pulled me back onto the road and we walked on, our energy spent and the tension between us gone. We walked on for what must’ve been an hour before coming to a tiny service station and convenience store. I called my backup supporters and Francis bought us both Moon Pies and Cheerwine. Around three-thirty, Pat and Raydean finally pulled into the parking lot to pick us up.

  Pat took one look at Francis and whistled softly under her breath. “Who’d you run into?” she asked.

  “A door,” Francis said. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

  “Happens to me all the time,” Raydean said, but continued to stare at him as if perhaps he were Flemish.

  The four of us squeezed into the broad front seat of Pat’s pickup truck. Francis sat next to Pat and I sat between him and Raydean. Fluffy took turns bouncing from one lap to another.

  “We’ve got to get out to Ernie Schwartz’s office,” I said. “Marla had an appointment at three and I’ve gotta talk to her.”

  “Is his office still over there near the courthouse?” Pat asked.

  “They got razor wire up over that jail,” Raydean said, apparently attaching the jail to the courthouse. “A boy tried to break out of there once and fell in that black bayou. Remember that, Pat?” she said. “It was February and them police liked to let him drown. I don’t like it over there.”

  “That makes two of us,” I said, patting her wrinkled hand. “But Marla might be in trouble.”

  “She’s too big-chested to be pregnant,” Raydean said. “I had a cat like her once. Litter nearly smothered.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Pat asked.

  “I’m not sure. But I got another bunch of flowers this morning and I got to thinking about what Raydean said. I think the killer might try and hurt Marla if he thinks she’s about to go free.”

  Francis winced and held a sweating soda can up against his bruised face. “Sierra,” he said, “I’m having a feeling, here. You want me to share it with you?”

  I almost went for it, but the look on his face stopped me. “No, Francis, this would not be one of those opportunities for sharing.”

  “’Cause I was gonna tell you I’m having a bad feeling. I’m having one of those call-the-police-and-let-them-handle-it feelings. I think we should go home and call your friend Nailor. I think he should know about our little sojourn into the heart of freakin’ Florida. I think we should share with him.”

  Raydean leaned over and stared at Francis. “You must’ve had the same therapist I did,” she muttered. “Young chick named Mavis, all the time trying to get us to share our feelings with the group.” Raydean rolled down the window and spat, then looked back at Francis. “Didn’t nobody ever tell you that sharing your feelings is nothing but a bunch of hooey?”

  Francis leaned back against the seat and shut his eyes. “Raydean,” he said, “I’m beginning to think you’re the sanest one of the bunch.”

  “Thank you,” Raydean said, a smug smile on her face. “Up at the big house they call that an affirmation.”

  Thirty-one

  A huge pin oak leaned over the brick walkway leading up to Ernie Schwartz’s office. The office itself was a two-story brick colonial, with white trim and black shutters. The entire scene had been arranged by professional designers, from the landscape on into the interior of the building. It looked like a movie set of an attorney’s office and nothing at all like the Ernie I knew. It lacked charm and personality. Worst of all, it lacked Marla the Bomber.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Ernie said, looking out of place behind a mammoth mahogany desk. He glanced at the Regulator pendulum clock, silently swinging away, and shrugged. “Maybe she and that idiot boyfriend of hers got carried away. Whatever, she never showed.”

  Little prickles of anxiety traveled up and down my skin, stinging me with intuition. Somewhere inside myself I’d known she wouldn’t keep her appointment. Something was horribly wrong and I knew it.

  Fluffy, always overjoyed to see her godfather, sat in Ernie’s lap and frowned. She understood the tone. She knew things didn’t look good.

  “I don’t suppose she left you Little Ricky’s phone number?”

  Ernie shook his head, riffled through some papers, and looked up at me again. “You know,” he said, “I like to think I’m a good judge of character. I really didn’t think she’d run off. If anything, that boyfriend convinced h
er to run off, but only after he’d filled her with enough alcohol to cloud her thinking.”

  I could just see Little Ricky sweet-talking Marla, and I knew she was totally gone on him, but I couldn’t quite see her leaving town, not when she thought she could prove her innocence. And not when she thought she still had a shot at being the top headliner at the Tiffany Gentleman’s Club. Marla the Bomber wanted the top billing at the Tiffany almost more than she wanted Little Ricky. She had to be in trouble.

  “Ernie, I’m going to find her for you. I’ll find Little Ricky and then I’ll find Marla and then we’ll get this mess taken care of. I don’t think she ran off.” Fluffy, sensing an impending departure, jumped off Ernie’s lap and ran to the door. “Call me if you hear from her. I’ll check my machine from the road.”

  Ernie shook his head again. “Sierra, I’d stay out of this one if I were you.”

  Fluffy moaned. Apparently she echoed Ernie’s sentiments.

  My crew of misfits sat under the pin oak, leaning against its broad base. Pat looked worn-out and Francis looked worse.

  “How about you guys drop me at my car and go on home?” I said. “I can call you if I need you. You look beat. No pun intended, Francis.”

  Pat struggled up to her feet and limped a few steps toward the pickup. “Well, if there’s nothing for us to do, and if you don’t need help, I might just take you up on that. I could use a nap and your brother could use a trip to the hospital to get his nose set. I could drop him off.”

  Francis stood up. “Where’s your friend?”

  “Ernie thinks she took off with Little Ricky.”

  Francis raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, but what do you think?”

  I looked around the parking lot, hesitating, then turned back to him. “I think she’s in trouble and I need to find her.”

  He nodded and started walking toward the truck. “I think I’ll come with you.”

  He opened the door and swung up into the front seat.

  “I think you should see a doctor,” I said. “Pat can drop you at the medical center and I can come get you after I run out to Little Ricky’s house.”