by Claire Adams
The doctor said the men had broken two of Luke’s ribs and a few of his fingers, but that otherwise, his wounds weren’t serious. Even being in as much pain as he was—and just to look at him, I knew that was a lot—Luke refused any painkillers stronger than ibuprofen. The doctor told him it would actually help him to heal if he would take something stronger. Every time Luke winced, I cursed Dean’s name.
So, when six o’clock rolled around and Luke told me we were going to have some company for dinner, I wasn’t having it. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a lot of time to argue. He had told me who was coming over immediately after Dean called to tell him that he was pulling up to the house.
Luke told me, “Just keep your mouth shut if you’re incapable of being decent to the man. You might be pissed at him, but he’s gone out of his way for me in more ways than you know.”
Then the door was open and Dean was coming in and we were sitting down at the table. Apparently, he had brought dinner with him. He set the bags of takeout on the table and Luke and he dug in. I wasn’t hungry.
“Dean, I just want to say thank you for all you’ve done for me here. It’s really overwhelming,” Luke said. I wanted to puke.
“It would have been better if it’d never happened in the first place, but I’m just glad you’re all right,” Dean answered. “How are you doing, Marcy? Are you holding up all right?”
I didn’t answer Dean or even look at him. I just glared at my brother.
“She’s a little mad,” Luke said. “Give her some time.”
For a few minutes, we all just focused on eating—they did, anyway. I just continued to stare down my brother for inviting him into the house. All things equal, I probably would have kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to say a single word to Dean anyway, and Luke was doing enough talking for all of us, but it was what Luke said that got to me.
“This food is delicious. Thank you again for helping so much and being so understanding with everything that’s happened,” Luke said. That was the moment I loosened my tongue.
“You’re seriously going to sit there and verbally jerk off your boss, even though he’s the guy who brought all this evil down right on your head?” I shot.
“You know what would have been better than a team of armed security and a doctor? Never having been assaulted in the middle of the night in the first place. Luke, I know you wanted me to keep my mouth shut so you could kiss the ass of the man who may as well have just given you the beating himself, but you are out of your damn mind!”
Neither Luke nor Dean said a word.
“And you,” I said, turning to Dean, “what gives you the right to just waltz on in here after what happened? You can see the house and you can see my brother, and I can assure you that neither one of them looked this good yesterday—not that either looks good now. Honestly, what kind of antisocial idiot in your position would show up here right now?”
Luke started, “Marce—”
“It’s okay,” Dean interrupted. “Let her speak.”
“Oh, gee, thanks for your permission, Mr. Carrick,” I mocked. “Did my brother tell you what happened to him? Did the doctor? Yeah, he’s trying to sit up all nice and straight like a good boy since you’re here, but those men attacked my brother to send you a message. This wasn’t about him—they don’t care about him. They didn’t care about me when they threatened me, either. This is on you, Dean. This is all on you.”
“I know it is,” he said.
“Well?” I shot back. “Is that all you’ve got? How do you justify continuing to not bring the police into this?”
“Whoa,” Luke said, holding up both palms toward me.
“You know it’s not that simple, Marcy,” Dean said. “If it comes to that, I’ll make the call myself, but—”
“Take a look around you, Dean. We’re already there.”
“Marcy,” Luke started again, “the police can’t protect us. We have to take care of this ourselves.”
“Right,” I scoffed, “that’s been working so well thus far, right?” I turned back to Dean. “Honestly, what could you possibly even have to say for yourself sitting next to a man who’s probably going to need months of recovery because you got us into this?”
“He’s the only reason any of us is alive right now,” Luke says. “Show some respect, Marce.”
“It’s okay,” Dean said. “She deserves an explanation, and I think you deserve one, too, Luke. There are some things you both should hear.”
“I’m all ears,” I responded.
“You know about Izzy and what they want me to do, but there’s another reason they’re coming at us so hard.”
“You,” I said. “They’re coming after you. Luke and I are just the human shields.”
Dean continued as if I hadn’t interrupted him. “After they killed Jenna, I wanted revenge. I couldn’t have found him on my own; I didn’t even know who had cut Jenna’s brake lines.
“Once the company broke through, though, I had money. Once I had money, I hired a few investigators—former ‘information extraction specialists’—to help me track down Jenna’s killer. They were able to glean that Izzy Iozzo was the trigger man, but Izzy had become underboss. Getting to him was going to be next to impossible.”
“Okay, so?” I asked.
“So I had to change tactics. I wanted to be close enough when Izzy died that I could make sure Jenna’s name was the last thing he heard before I took him.”
“Took him?” I asked. Dean and Luke both looked at me. “Oh,” I said, my eyes widening at the realization. “I got it.”
“I had them put a bug on Izzy’s car,” Dean continued. “For the first week or so, I just watched the blip on the screen as it moved between Yonkers and the city and even a little into Jersey. A guy like Izzy never travels alone, and I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could just blast my way through.
“As time went on, though, I got a new idea. He wouldn’t know it was me, and Jenna’s name wouldn’t be the last thing to go through his mind. Every time Izzy came into the city, he’d stop by a bar on Canal Street. After that, he would park at the same hotel, sometimes for hours. That was my chance.”
“I thought you said he never travelled alone,” I responded while Luke tried valiantly to get a too-big piece of chicken into his mouth.
“He didn’t. I wasn’t going straight for him, though. I just needed a few minutes with his car. Jenna died because Izzy cut her brake lines and the next time she got in, he rode her bumper until she lost control. It only seemed right that he should go out the same way she did,” he said.
“I found schematics online for the make and model of Izzy’s car—I’ve never been good with mechanical anything. Then it was just a matter of waiting.”
I was finally listening.
“When he finally drove into the city, I went straight to the hotel. There’s a restaurant right across the street from the hotel where Izzy used to go, so I just camped out there. With a table at the window, I had a decent view of the entrance to the parking garage beneath the hotel. I only had to wait about half an hour.
“Izzy didn’t go for the parking garage, though. He parked out front and tossed his keys to the valet. He wasn’t alone. A woman was with him. She was drunk, stumbling. When Izzy made it around the car, he had to help her walk into the building. I left $500 on the table and left the restaurant.”
“What does this have to do with Luke?”
“This part of the story?” he asked. “Nothing. To be frank, I didn’t start looping your brother in since I met him for dinner and found you sitting at the table.”
“Hey, thanks for the job, big bro,” I told Luke. “Looks like it worked out really well for both of us.”
“You wanted to know the truth and that’s what I’m giving you,” Dean said. “It occurred to me that the woman might get back into the car with Izzy, but I buried the thought. What I found out was that even with the changes that have come with technology, it’s still way too easy to cut
someone’s brake lines if you know what you’re looking for.”
“How did you find the car if you didn’t see where he’d parked, though?” I asked. “I can’t imagine you wanted to be wandering around that parking lot all night.”
“The tracker was still on Izzy’s car,” Dean answered. “I lost the signal when it went into the garage, but I picked it back up again when I was inside.”
“So, you did it. You cut the guy’s brake lines.”
“Yeah,” he said. “As soon as the brake fluid started falling, I figured the valet would never get in the car. Luckily for me, he didn’t seem to notice the pools on the ground.”
“How did the valet stop the car to drop it off if you’d cut the brake lines?” I asked.
“Brake fluid doesn’t all come out at once. It takes time, and it takes the pressure of someone putting their foot on the pedal to run the lines completely dry. I didn’t know how long it would take, but the valet wouldn’t be an issue.”
I looked at my brother. “Cutting brake lines,” I said. “At least he’s one of the good guys, right?”
“Marce, the guy’s still alive. Obviously, something happened,” Luke dismissed.
“I started having second thoughts when I got back to my own car parked a little ways down the block, and I saw Izzy come out of the hotel with his date still draped over his shoulder. Getting Izzy, that wasn’t a problem. I hadn’t bargained for a passenger, though. I had been hoping he’d leave the woman in the hotel, but they both got in the car. They started off, so I started off.”
I didn’t like where the story was going.
“The tracker was still on Izzy’s car, so I was able to hang back far enough he wouldn’t know I was following him. If my plan was going to work, Izzy couldn’t know what was going on until he pressed down on that brake pedal and nothing happened.
“After a few blocks, I started to think I’d cut the wrong lines because every time I saw his brake lights flash, his car dutifully slowed. We were almost out of the city before those lights came on and he rolled through that first intersection.
“I ran the stoplight. I knew this was it. If I didn’t keep the pressure on Izzy, he’d get the car stopped one way or another. In my head, in that moment, there was only one acceptable way for that car to ever come to a stop again, and that was after going off the road doing triple digits with me right behind him, so I closed the distance between us as he was pulling onto I-87. He was trying to get onto the shoulder and get his car to slow down that way, but I bumped his tail. Once he knew I was there, he hit the gas.”
Luke asked, “You think he knew it was you?”
“I have no idea if he knew then, but he does now. I think he’d figured if he could get going on 87, he wouldn’t be in too much trouble as long as he watched his speed and maybe lose me in traffic, but I never let him get far enough ahead. We were going seventy-five in hardly any time, and I knew it was enough.
“I’d already planned how I was going to stop my car after it was done and wait for the police to show up. I had these glorious visions of being hailed as a hero when I got put to trial and maybe, just maybe, I could get a sympathetic jury.”
“Luke said it before, though: Izzy didn’t die, so what happened?” I asked.
Dean said, “Izzy was driving like someone was trying to kill him which, in his case at least, meant he was erratic. He was all over the road, and if I was going to keep the pressure on him, I had to stay with him. He was trying to turn the tables, but I still had the advantage.
“It was when he pulled off 87, almost running both of us into an oncoming truck as we screamed over the off-ramp and back onto city streets, that I had a change of heart. It wasn’t the close call that got to me, though. It was the way that woman’s face looked through the passenger window of Izzy’s car as he darted in and out of traffic. She was sobbing and screaming—I couldn’t hear it, but even without a soundtrack, you can tell when someone’s….
“Anyway, I started to ease off of the accelerator. He was losing me, but when I saw that woman in his passenger seat, fearing for her life, I couldn’t help wondering if that’s what Jenna’s face looked like when Izzy did what he did. I stayed with him for a few more blocks, but the truth was, I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t like him. I’m not like him. I’m not a monster.
“The next day, I got a large envelope in the mail. There were pictures of me working on Jenna’s old car. Rather, there were pictures that looked like I was working on Jenna’s old car. They had a shot of me rolled under the front of the vehicle with the red handle of a tool sticking out from under the side. What was really happening in the picture was I was trying to bolt one of those little, metal boxes so there’s always a hidden spare key on the car. We’d tried the magnetic kind, but that wasn’t working and Jenna…”
Dean sighed, “She was always locking her keys in the car. Under that picture was another picture. It was a shot of the tool Izzy had used to cut Jenna’s brakes. The handle looked similar to the handle of the tool I was trying to work under the car in the first shot, so they didn’t have to spell anything out for me. They knew it was me, and if I didn’t go along with whatever they wanted, they were going to make sure those pictures made it in front of a judge and I’d be put away for killing my own wife.
“They still have it. The last time I talked to Joe, he said they had about six different witnesses that would testify I was messing around with Jenna’s car the day that she died. All that and whatever else they can think to throw on the fire goes to the police unless I testify that Izzy the God-damned Monster was with me the night of the murder he’s in prison for committing, and thus couldn’t possibly have committed the crimes.”
Luke said, “That’s stupid, though. They’d never buy that. The guy’s been away for a while now, why would you just be coming forward now to get him off the hook?”
“It’s not stupid,” I said. “If Izzy actually was with Dean that night, even if they didn’t have any of this history, do you really think Dean would risk his reputation and his company by tying himself to a mobster? It would ruin his life, or at least how they’d paint it.”
“You got it,” Dean said. “Now, they want me to set the man who killed my wife free, though. That’s something I can’t do.”
“Jenna meant a lot to you, didn’t she?” I asked.
Dean looked up at me and took a breath. “Yes, she did,” he answered. “You mean a lot to me, too. I’m not going to let what happened to Jenna happen to you. If I can’t get out of this, though, it’s never going to end and none of us will ever be safe.
“I know you’re not going to like hearing this, especially right now, Marcy, but I need your help. Yours, too, Luke. I have a plan, but I can’t do it alone. I tried keeping you from getting too close to this, but that’s happened anyway. Will you help me? Help all of us?”
It was almost like I was sitting outside myself, hearing everything. None of it sounded real. None of it felt real. When I looked across the table at my brother, though, I snapped back into myself.
In a way, I felt betrayed. Dean knew all of this before we met, but he’d only told me after they beat Luke half to death. He said he cared about me. The way he said it, it almost sounded like he was placing my value to him up there with Jenna. Our relationship was never supposed to be serious, though. He’d told me more than once that the first night we were together, he hadn’t planned on ever seeing me again.
Once we had gotten together in a seemingly more permanent way, he continued to close himself off to me. I felt like I didn’t even know him, and he was asking me and my brother for help in going up against the mob. Who the hell was I to even think about doing something like that? I’d never fired a gun and I’d never been in a real fight. I knew nothing about strategy or planning with something like this.
Dean was asking us to trust him far enough to agree to his plan blind. It left a bad taste in my mouth. “I can’t promise anything between you and me, Dean,” I started, “bu
t what do you need us to do?”
Chapter Eighteen
Grinding to a Halt
It was barely four in the morning when Dean and I got to his office. He’d done so much work to get me to believe there was more for me than sitting on the sidelines, but when I asked what I was supposed to do all day and he answered, “Stay out of sight as much as possible,” I stopped believing he had any real part here for me.
Just as before, I was going to end up as bait for the people Dean had hooked up with in the first place. He said that wasn’t the way of it, but after sitting in the corner of his office while he worked at his desk, barked orders to subordinates, and threatened a competitor with a hostile takeover, I started to chafe. We stayed at the office all day, and entire time, while he was taking care of his business, he didn’t even mention Izzy Iozzo, or just what the hell our next move was supposed to be.
As we left the office that night, he assured me that his plan was coming together, I just had to give it some time, but my patience was plastic-wrap-thin. That night, Dean dropped me off at Luke’s.
My brother, being the dancing bear that he was, was already back at work. He still had trouble walking, and the overall look of him was kind of like Edward Norton halfway through Fight Club, but the one thing being close to Dean provided was a whole lot of security. I was going back to stay with my brother so Dean’s people could better protect us both. According to Dean, he wasn’t in any immediate jeopardy as they’d need him alive and visibly unharmed if the parole board was going to buy his story. The whole thing was lopsided.
Luke got home about the same time I did and we waited on the front porch together while a couple of Dean’s guys went back through the house to make sure nobody had gotten past them while we were gone. The place was clear, and so Luke and I went inside. Once we were alone, though, even Luke had to drop the façade.
