by S. G. Browne
With Harry Denton’s on fire and the elevators shut down, we don’t have any other option. So we run back into Harry Denton’s and through the other exit door and up another flight of stairs to the roof.
The door to the roof has another warning sign: NO ROOF ACCESS—ALARM WILL SOUND.
Not much of a deterrent when the floor below you is on fire and you’re being chased by three Mafia types with guns. So I push the door open and step out onto the roof with Jimmy and Doug behind me, ignoring the alarm as we look for a way to barricade the door. But they don’t design hotel roofs the way they used to.
“Wow,” says Jimmy, looking around. Above us, a blue, neon star rotates slowly around, bathing the roof in pale light. “I’ve never been on the roof of a hotel before.”
“Me either,” says Doug. “This is the shizzle.”
“Glad I could add to your life experiences,” I say. “Now help me find the way down.”
We find the fire escape on the Sutter Street side of the hotel, on the opposite end of the roof from the fire, so at least we won’t have to worry about dodging flames coming out of shattered windows.
Along the way, Doug finds a penny, heads up, and pockets it. “It’s good luck, Holmes.”
At this point, I’m not going to argue with Doug. We can use all of the help we can get.
On the street below us, two fire engines have pulled up in front of the building and a crowd has started to gather on the sidewalks. The circus is starting.
“Okay,” I say. “Doug, you first.”
“It’s Bow—”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just go.”
As Doug climbs down the ladder onto the first landing, Jimmy looks over the edge and says, “I’m not going down there.”
“You don’t have a choice,” I say.
“But I’m scared.”
“I know you are. But you’ll be fine. I won’t let you get hurt.”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” I say, though I wonder if I’ve just agreed to more than I can deliver.
Jimmy looks once more over the edge, then starts to climb down the ladder.
“I’ll be right behind you,” I say. “And it might help if you don’t focus so much on the height.”
Before I can follow Jimmy, the roof door bangs open and I hear Tommy shout out behind me, “Enough.”
I turn around to see Tommy flanked by Thug One and Thug Two, both of them pointing guns at me. And I can’t think of a single triple meter rhyme.
“Back on the roof,” says Tommy. “And Mr. Monday, step away from the boy.”
I look down at Doug, who has made it to the next landing and is looking up at me, starting to climb. I shake my head once, then I turn back to Tommy.
“What makes you think I haven’t already poached his luck?” I say.
“Let’s call it a hunch,” says Tommy. “Now step away.”
Jimmy is halfway down the ladder, watching me. I don’t step away, but instead nod to Jimmy and say, “Come on.”
Thug One walks toward us, his gun trained on me. I know this can only have a happy ending if I pretend to do what it is that I know how to do so well. I just hope Jimmy’s good luck is strong enough to keep him safe.
As Thug One closes the distance, I extend my right hand toward Jimmy. “Trust me.”
“Stop,” says Tommy.
I doubt he or his thugs will risk shooting me at this point, but that thought doesn’t exactly leave me overflowing with confidence as I grasp Jimmy’s right hand in mine. Then Thug One grabs me and pulls me away.
I’ve never had to fake a poaching before. I suppose it’s like faking an orgasm, but I’ve never faked one of those, either. And as far as I know, neither has any woman I’ve ever slept with. But to make this work, I have to give a good performance, so I open my mouth in a single, gasping intake of breath and force tears out of my eyes, which isn’t too much of a stretch considering I’ve just been clubbed on the back of the head with a gun.
I drop to my hands and knees, pretending to be overwhelmed with the power of Jimmy’s Pure luck. I even offer up a couple of full body twitches and hope I’m not overdoing it.
Then Thug One points his gun into the base of my spine. “Get up.”
I stand up, gasping, wiping the tears from my eyes, and offer up one last shudder for my performance.
I’d like to thank the Academy . . .
“That wasn’t a smart move,” says Tommy.
“Funny,” I say, taking a deep breath, “that’s the last thing my father ever said to me.”
“Lucky for you they won’t be the last words you hear,” says Tommy.
I look over at Jimmy, standing by the fire-escape ladder, his eyes wide as he looks back and forth from me to Tommy and his thugs. Behind him, Doug’s head peeks up over the edge of the roof, then disappears.
“What happens now?” I ask, trying to keep Tommy’s attention on me and away from the fire escape.
“The inevitable,” says Tommy, who motions to his thugs.
Jimmy looks at me, his expression filled with panic. “Don’t let them take me.”
“It’ll be okay,” I say, hoping I sound more confident than I am. Hoping Jimmy’s good luck protects him and the police are on their way up and things play out according to my plan. Though who am I kidding? There isn’t any plan. There’s just chaos and chance and luck.
Thug Two walks over and opens the door, which seems to be his forte, while Thug One takes Jimmy by the arm and leads him toward the door.
“Don’t let them take me,” says Jimmy, looking back at me, his eyes wide and pleading. “Please!”
Then the door closes and the three of them are gone, leaving me on the roof with Tommy and a double serving of doubt and guilt.
“Where are they taking him?” I ask, moving away from the edge of the roof and, more important, away from the fire escape.
“That’s none of your concern,” says Tommy. “He’s worthless to me now. You, on the other hand, have managed to increase your value. At least for the short term.”
As I continue to circle around Tommy, he turns and follows me, still pointing his gun. I know he’s not going to shoot me and risk losing the luck he thinks I poached, but it’s still unnerving to be held at gunpoint by a sociopathic Mafia kingpin.
“How short is short?” I say.
“That depends,” says Tommy, his back to the fire escape.
“On what?” I ask, as Doug’s head appears above the roofline.
“On how much you’re willing to sacrifice.”
I shake my head, hoping Doug gets the message, but the only one who gets it is Tommy.
“You haven’t even heard my terms,” says Tommy.
“Why don’t we discuss them in your suite. I’ve had enough of the roof.”
“Good idea,” says Tommy, walking toward the door, his eyes locked on me.
Behind Tommy, Doug climbs up the ladder and steps down onto the roof.
I follow Tommy to the door, hoping I can get him out of here before Doug does something stupid. But then I’m reminded that this is Doug we’re talking about, who believes he’s protected by a brass ring on a cord around his neck rather than by the luck I stole from him.
“After you,” says Tommy. He reaches the door and puts his free hand out to open it.
Before I can get to the door, Doug’s cell phone goes off, playing “Who Let the Dogs Out?” Tommy turns around, his reflexes faster than I would have imagined for an old guy, and shoots once. Before I have a chance to blink, Doug crumples to the roof.
“No,” I say, the word coming out in a gasp.
Just after Tommy’s gun goes off, the roof door slams open, smacking Tommy in the face, sending him stumbling back several steps before he falls down, his head hitting the roof, the gun falling from his hand and bouncing away, his eyes shut and his mouth open. Out cold.
Before I can grab the gun or head over to check on Doug, Mandy steps out onto the roof, naked and holding a
carving knife in her hand.
“Mandy,” I say, taking a step toward her. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?” she says, limping toward me, the carving knife held out in front of her with both hands, her chest rising and falling in deep breaths. I back away, alternately glancing from Tommy to Doug to Mandy, trying to figure out what to do, though I keep my eyes above the horizon because it’s a little weird seeing Mandy naked. Not that I’m attracted to her or anything. This isn’t a Flowers in the Attic moment. But discovering that my sister is a full bald eagle is something I could have lived without.
And here we are, right back where we started.
“LET’S JUST RELAX,” I say. “Why don’t you put that thing away?”
From the glint in Mandy’s eye and the way her upper lip is twitching, I can tell she’s not completely reasonable, so I back up toward the edge of the roof, casting another glance at Doug, who remains motionless.
“This is all your fault,” she says, pointing at me with the knife for emphasis. “All of it. Everything. Your fault!”
In addition to her being naked and limping and holding a knife, I notice that her hair is singed and smoldering and that she has burn marks on her shoulders and waist.
Above us, a helicopter comes into view. At first I think it’s the police, until I see the CBS logo on the side.
I try to think of something I can say to calm Mandy down. To defuse the situation. But I’m afraid anything I say will be misconstrued. So I just give her a smile in the hopes that it will ease the tension.
“Do you think this is funny?” she says, stabbing at the air to punctuate the last three words.
“No,” I say, backing up until I’m less than three feet from the edge of the roof. “It’s not funny at all.”
A crowd has gathered on the street twenty-two stories below, their faces indistinct in the glow of the streetlamps, but I can see all of the news vans, reporters, and cameras trained at the top of the hotel. The CBS helicopter circles around us again, the cameraman hanging out the open door with a video camera.
Mandy suddenly realizes she’s on television and tries to cover up. But when all you have to hide behind is a carving knife, modesty tends to run up a white flag.
Right about now, Mandy’s daughters are probably home watching the news and wondering what their mom is doing on the roof of the Sir Francis Drake with a butcher knife. Her husband is probably wondering why his wife isn’t wearing any clothes.
I’m kind of wondering that myself.
“What happened?” I ask.
“What happened?” she says, letting out a single, bitter laugh. “I’ll tell you what happened. First I fell halfway down a flight of stairs and twisted my ankle. Then I got into an elevator that took me up instead of down and the next thing I know, I’m stumbling into Harry Denton’s and knocking over a buffet table and setting myself on fire. That’s what happened.”
Well, that explains the knife and why she’s naked and singed. It doesn’t explain the waxing, but there are some things I’d rather not know.
“I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” I say. “I never intended for this to happen, but—”
“Fuck your intentions, Aaron. I’m infected with bad luck. I can feel it moving through me. It’s like I’m being raped from the inside out. Do you have any idea how that feels?”
I do, but I don’t think now is the time to get into a game of one-upmanship.
“I put this life behind me,” she says, brandishing the knife again for emphasis, just in case I’d forgotten about it. “And then you showed up and ruined everything.”
“Mandy, I understand you’re angry—”
She lets out another short, bitter laugh.
“—but we’re not the only ones involved here.” I point behind her with both hands to the supine figures of Tommy and Doug.
Doug’s phone goes off again, the Baha Men asking their timeless, repetitive question. Then it goes to voice mail.
When Mandy turns around, I run over and grab Tommy’s gun. I don’t know if it’s the realization that two bodies are up here with us and one or both of them might be dead or that I’m now holding a gun, but Mandy drops her knife and starts to cry. I take off my suit coat and put it around her, buttoning it to keep her warm. Plus I’m getting a little skeeved out by the whole naked-sister, Brazilian-wax thing.
“Get away from me,” she says, pushing my hands away and turning around.
“Mandy—”
“Whatever you have to say, I don’t want to hear it.”
“You don’t understand. I was—”
“I don’t want to hear your excuses, Aaron.” She turns back around to face me, her cheeks wet with tears. “I just want you to leave me alone.”
We stare at each other, me trying to think of something to say to make everything all right, and Mandy looking like it wouldn’t matter what I said.
“Don’t ever come near me or my family again,” she says.
“But—”
“Ever.” She turns and limps across the roof. Before I can come up with any other excuses, the door shuts behind her and she’s gone.
I consider going after her, not because I think I can get her to change her mind but because I don’t want to leave Mandy on her own, infected with bad luck. I’m afraid she won’t make it out of the hotel alive. But then Tommy lets out a little moan and I realize I have to take care of him before I do anything else.
I walk over to him, the gun held out in front of me, just in case he wakes up. But the moan appears to have been a onetime thing. He’s still unconscious, his eyes closed and his mouth hanging open. I walk around until I’m standing at his head, then I remove the vial of bad luck from my pocket.
I kneel down and set the gun next to me, then I uncap the vial and dump the contents into Tommy’s open mouth. He gags once and coughs. Before he can spray any drops of the bad luck in my face, I grab the gun and stand up and move around him, holding the gun on him just in case.
Tommy coughs again. His body spasms and twitches. Then his eyes open and he sits up, grabbing at his throat, his hands going to his chest and then to his stomach. He looks up at me, his eyes wide.
“You . . .”
I nod. “Me.”
He gets to his feet like the old man he is and stands there gasping and wheezing, his eyes locked on mine, his face seeming to grow older by the second. It’s as if all the good luck he’s been consuming was like some fountain of youth that kept the years away, and now they’re all coming back at once.
“By the way,” I say, “the police are on their way. You should have a lot of fun in prison. I hear kidnappers are real popular.”
Tommy reaches up and touches his face, his hands shaking, and he lets out a strangled sob. Then his eyes grow wide again and for a moment I think he’s going to rush me. Instead he turns around and stumbles past the door toward the back of the hotel. At first I’m thinking he’s trying to pull some kind of trick, but then he just steps off the edge of the roof, like he didn’t know it was there, and he’s gone, without so much as a scream or a good-bye.
I run over to the edge of the roof and look down. In the wash of light from the hotel room windows about twenty stories down, I see Tommy’s body sprawled out on an adjacent roof of the Drake. And he’s not moving.
I’ve never killed anyone before. Not on purpose, anyway. But if the bad luck I poached three years ago was responsible for one death in Tucson, then Tommy is number two. Four, if you count the two goons downstairs.
I’m a busy guy.
Still, I’m not sure how I feel about Tommy’s death. Relieved is probably a good place to start. And I guess you could say it’s taking me a moment to adjust to the reality of what just happened. Remorse doesn’t really factor into the situation, though I’m not planning to make a career out of this. Being a professional hit man isn’t my thing. Let’s just say I’m not shedding any tears.
At least this should get Barry Manilow off my back.
<
br /> I give Tommy one last look to make sure he’s still dead, then I go to check on Doug.
He’s flat on his back, his eyes closed, his arms out to the side and his legs splayed out as if in some ritual sacrifice. The only thing missing is blood. I don’t see any. Not on his chest, not on the roof, not anywhere. So I bend down and check his pulse and realize he’s still alive.
I’m thinking maybe he didn’t get shot at all. Maybe Tommy missed or Doug just fainted out of fear. Then I notice the half-inch-thick gold medallion emblazoned with BW hanging around his neck, and I see the hole right in the center of it.
“Doug,” I say, shaking him gently. “Doug, wake up. Doug.”
His eyes flutter open and he takes a deep breath, then he blinks his eyes a couple of times, smiles, and looks up at me and says, “It’s Bow Wow, Holmes.”
I help him sit up and he lets out another deep breath, followed by an “Ouch.” He runs his hands over his torso, then he looks up at me.
“Was I shot?”
I nod. “I think your bling saved you.”
He looks down and holds up the medallion and pokes his finger through the hole, then he looks down at his New York Jets jersey and does the same to the hole there before he lifts up his shirt. A big bruise is in the center of his chest. In the middle of the bruise is the bullet, partially embedded in his flesh, a small trickle of blood running down to his navel. On either side of the bullet, now in two pieces, hangs the brass ring Doug’s father gave him.
Doug looks up at me. “I told you it was a good-luck charm, Holmes.”
I have to admit, I don’t have any explanation as to how this happened. After I poached Doug’s luck, he shouldn’t have been able to survive a car accident, let alone getting shot. Good-luck charm or not, he should have been dead. But like I said, there’s no such thing as coincidence.
I think about Doug’s superstitions and how he holds them so close. How he believes in them. How he attributes all of his good fortune to his good-luck charms and the actions he takes to avoid or counteract bad luck. Maybe there’s more to good-luck charms than I’ve always believed. Maybe they do offer some kind of protection or draw in good luck. Maybe when someone who was born with good luck carries around a charm or a talisman, it gets imbued with that same quality of luck.
