Take-Out

by Rob Hart

  “It’s never wrong to start with words,” he said. “I want you to know I’m damn proud of you. You held your own against multiple attackers long enough to allow help to arrive. I’m half-tempted to talk to Johnny to see if we can bump you up a grade level. I think you earned it.”

  Ophelia blushed in response.

  Ethan arched an eyebrow. Picked up his beer.

  Taking the hint.

  “I’m going to see who else is around,” he said.

  “Wait.” Ophelia stood up, drained her wine glass. She nodded toward Jason’s beer. “Want another?”

  Jason knocked it back and put the empty glass on the table. “Sure.”

  “I’m going to buy a round for everyone,” she said. “And there are a few people here, I need to learn their names. And then I’ll be back. You’ll be here?”

  Jason smiled. “Sure.”

  “Good.”

  Ophelia made for the bar. As she waited for the bartender to finish up a complicated drink order, flush with the warmth of the alcohol, Ethan slid up alongside her.

  “Someone’s hot for teacher,” he said.

  “So what if I am?”

  “It would be your first smart dating-related decision of the night.”

  “Ha-ha,” she said. Then she craned her neck to look Ethan in the eye. “I owe you my life.”

  “Keep me in drinks for a little while and we’ll call it even,” he said. “Look, I wasn’t kidding. I admire you. I admire that you look at the world and you want something…I don’t know… more civilized, I guess you could say. But I think we all learned an important lesson tonight. Didn’t we?”

  Ophelia nodded. “That we did. Swipe left on Nazis.”

  “No, punch them. Always punch Nazis.” He raised his voice. “What do we do with Nazis?”

  Everyone in the bar put their fists in the air, and, in unison, shouted, “Always punch Nazis!”

  Ophelia smiled. That heavy feeling in her stomach replaced by another warm feeling, of community, and togetherness, and a moment of shared victory after a night of hard work.

  Eric Calabrese stood at the back of The Mysterious Bookshop, surveying the crowd that was nearly spilling out the door and onto the sidewalk. Snow fell in lazy circles outside the tall windows and the space was permeated by the smell of his grandmother’s lasagna.

  She died years ago, but his sister Christine resurrected the recipe. She made five trays. Eric thought it was a bit much, but that’s Italian hospitality: there’s not enough food unless there’s too much food.

  He’d brought Tupperware containers so people could bring home leftovers, a scenario growing less likely every time the heavy doors swung open and a burst of cold air whipped through the store.

  He had been warned continuously—by his agent, by his publisher, by his writing pals—that book release parties were exercises in frustration. Especially for a first book. Even more especially during the holidays, with so many people out of town. That he might see a couple of friends, maybe a few stragglers off the street, but that’s it.

  But then the New York Times review hit.

  The writer called his book “thoughtful” and “precise” and “heart-rending.” Suddenly, it was everywhere. NY1, the Daily News, and the Post covered it. Buzzfeed shot a short video, in which a writer for the site, who looked like he was playing dress-up as a lumberjack, raved about it. Tomorrow morning, he had to be in Times Square at 6 a.m. for Good Morning America.

  The plastic cup of red wine in his hand, the first of the night, would also be the last. No sense in being hungover for that.

  Someone broke through the crowd and approached the spot Eric had staked out by the coat rack. It was Ian, the lanky bookstore manager.

  “You ready to get started?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Eric said. “What’s the plan?”

  “I’ll do a quick introduction, and then you can have the floor. The owner isn’t a big fan of authors reading from their books. Usually, we just do discussion and questions. But with a crowd like this…” He gestured at the packed room. “You can do pretty much whatever you want.”

  “Could I have a minute?”

  “Sure,” Ian said. “Just give me a wave.”

  Eric finished the last of his wine and set the cup on a shelf heavy with Sherlock Holmes books. He ducked into the back room, and then the bathroom, shutting the door and locking it behind him. He put down the toilet seat and sat, running his fingers over the glossy cover of his book.

  White Sheep: Growing Up in the Calabrese Crime Family.

  There were a hundred more copies in the store—after the Times review, Ian said he upped the order. This was one of the first off the press, filled up with sticky notes, marking off passages Eric thought might be good for live readings.

  He wasn’t thrilled about a discussion. Because there wasn’t much about this he wanted to discuss. Everything he wanted to say about his childhood was in black-and-white, between his hands. Writing about it had excised it, and it felt perverse to dwell.

  Eric looked at himself on the cover of the book. The photo the designer chose was in color, but faded. He was standing in front of the Wonder Wheel in Coney Island. His mother, short and pear-shaped, with big eyes and a stern smile, had her arm draped over his shoulder. Next to them was his father, holding Christine, wrapped in a swaddling blanket. She was only six months old.

  He hated the photo.

  He was chubby and his ears stuck out. He was wearing that god-awful Star Wars t-shirt, which had been black once, but had stretched and faded to gray. His white tube socks came up to his knobby knees.

  Worse than that, his father was in it.

  But his publisher, Jason, insisted. The story was about them, and the photo lent it an air of verisimilitude. That’s the word Jason used.

  It meant honesty. Eric was pretty sure Jason was trying to bury the debate under a ten-dollar word. It worked. He handed over the photo and here it was, staring back at him like a bad memory that keeps a person up at night.

  When Eric could put aside the weight of it pressing against his chest, when he could separate the memory of his dad disappearing from their lives only a few months after it was taken, he had to acknowledge it did look pretty nice on the cover of the book.

  Eric wondered what his father looked like now, twenty years later.

  Wondered if he was even alive.

  He was a stout man, thick in the shoulders, but in a healthy way. He played football in college and looked like he could still hold his own in a pick-up game. Dark, curly hair that got passed to Christine, whereas Eric inherited his mother’s light and fair complexion.

  There was a knock at the door. Eric got up and flushed the toilet, so whoever was outside wouldn’t wonder why he was just sitting around in the bathroom.

  He opened the door and stepped into the back room.

  Straight into his father.

  Manetto Calabrese.

  Eric drew in a breath, held it, found he couldn’t let it out. He nearly dropped the book, but caught himself.

  He knew it immediately. Those pale blue eyes, the dark hair gone gray but still curling in ringlets around his ears. Except, he looked so different. Like a Thanksgiving Day balloon at the end of the route, caving in on itself.

  “Hello, Eric,” his father said, his voice weak, but still reverberating the way it did, so you could always tell where he was in a room. He was wearing a tan coat, a red scarf, and black leather gloves. His face freshly shaved. Impeccably put together, always, and all these years later.

  “Dad?”

  His father smiled. The smile stretched his face into something akin to a grimace.

  Eric’s first instinct was to ball up his fist, throw it into his father’s face.

  He took a deep breath. Reminded himself that he was not like his father.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, lowering his voice.

  “My boy writes a book,” he says. “I wanted to wish you well.”

/>   Eric felt his temperature and pulse rising in tandem. “So you just show up? You’re in witness protection. You can’t do that.”

  “It’s too late now, isn’t it,” he said with another smile, showing a little more strength. “How’ve you been, kiddo?”

  “Don’t do that,” Eric said, stepping back toward the bathroom door. Wanting there to be space between them, which was difficult in the back room, full of books and shelves that had been pushed off the floor to make room up front. “You missed so much of my life. You missed mom’s funeral.”

  The smile disappeared. “She wouldn’t have wanted me there.”

  “We would have wanted you there. Just some kind of acknowledgement that you even cared.”

  “I do care,” his father said. “I care very much. There are still people in this town who want me dead. You think I do this lightly?”

  Eric started to say something, but stopped himself. What was there to say that could sum up twenty years and every conceivable emotion?

  Except: “You shouldn’t have come.”

  “C’mon, I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” his father said. “And I have to admit, I was a little upset when I first read the book. There’s a lot of dirt in there. But it’s mostly all correct…”

  “You read it already?” Eric asked. “It just came out today.”

  “I used to run this town, kid. You think I can’t get an advanced copy of the book, even all the way out in Arizona?”

  The thought of his father in the desert almost made Eric laugh. Before witness protection, his father never left New York. Barely left Brooklyn. “So that’s where they put you?”

  “Scottsdale,” his father said. “All they know about Italian food is Olive Garden. It’s tragic. I tried the lasagna up front. I know my mother’s lasagna. Did you do that?”

  “Christine.”

  His face lit up. “Is she here?”

  “I think you should go.”

  “I just got here. Let me just see her. See how she turned out.”

  “She turned out great, no thanks to you,” Eric said. “I think we both turned out pretty damn good considering you disappeared. You gave up on this family a long time ago. I’m the one who provided for Mom and Christine.”

  “Hey,” his father said, his voice snapping. “How about a little gratitude, huh? You still found a way to profit off it.”

  Eric felt himself grow flush. Wondered if he should hold back, but decided he shouldn’t. His greatest strength was his words, so he aimed them at his father like a barrage of bullets. “I would trade everything this book has brought me if it meant you stayed. Instead, you ratted out a bunch of guys and ran and hid. Like a coward. You gave us nothing. You left us nothing. All we have is your absence. I figured out a way to make it provide for me and Christine. That’s what this book is. You leaving was the only gift you ever gave us.”

  “Eric,” his father said, stepping forward, his eyes misting. “Please. It’s Christmas. And I’m trying. Doesn’t that mean something?”

  Eric turned and looked away, not wanting his father to see him cry. Remembering what happened the last time, when his fourth grade teacher died suddenly; a sharp, disappointed admonishment that it’s not what “real men” did.

  After a few moments of silence, his father said, “I loved you and your sister and your mother. I want you to know that. For whatever it means to you. Even if it means nothing. The things I did…I did them because I was protecting you. That was always the most important thing.”

  A pause.

  “I love you, Eric. Best of luck with the book, okay?”

  Eric heard the sound of footsteps, and the door creaking open.

  He turned, and found he was alone in the small space, the door swinging closed.

  OFFICER REBECCA BHATI grasped the heavy-duty headphones and pulled them off her ears. They were digging into her head and she needed a little relief. Not that she needed to wear them. She could barely hear over the din coming from inside the bookstore. It sounded like waves crashing into a rocky shore.

  But she liked to listen. It was good to be thorough. There wasn’t much else to do besides try to find a comfortable position in the ancient office chair, arrived here from points unknown.

  The NYPD surveillance van wasn’t pleasant. And it didn’t smell good. The outside was brandished with the logo of the Fulton Fish Market and she idly wondered if that was a cover, or if that’s where the department bought it from. The brackish smell seemed to confirm her suspicion, but that could also be years of accumulated sweat and takeout.

  She turned to her right, to Detective Seth Tanner, spilling out of his own office chair, peering at the hodge-podge of monitors, his face cast blue in the flickering light. The setup looked like someone raided a Radio Shack that was going out of business.

  She looked up at the mug shot of Manetto “Manny” Calabrese taped to the wall of the van.

  “You sure it was him?” she asked Tanner.

  “I think so,” Tanner said, not looking away from the monitor. “No one’s seen the guy in two decades, but I think it was him. Lost some weight, but same hair. Same gait.” Tanner looked down at the keyboard like it was alien technology. “I don’t even know where to start with this. Can you play it back?”

  Bhati slid her chair across the cramped space to the keyboard, tapped the hotkeys that would rewind and then replay the video. She watched as a hunched figure strode past the camera and turned into the bookstore.

  To her eyes, it was a blur.

  But Tanner seemed convinced.

  Because he was smiling. And Tanner was not a guy who smiled.

  “If this is him, it’s a pretty big deal, right?” Bhati asked, her breath pluming in front of her.

  Tanner reached down and clicked on the space heater by his feet. Within moments, it would smell like a bundle of hair caught fire, but that would be enough to bring the temperature up to a more comfortable level.

  “If it’s him,” Tanner said.

  Bhati looked down at the space heater. “Are you sure that thing is safe to be using in here?”

  “Not really, no,” Tanner said.

  Bhati picked up her headphones again, placing them carefully over her ears. Same sounds. Waves crashing. She thought she could pick out a word here or there, but it’d all be useless until the tech people cleaned it up. Which might not even be necessary. She took the headphones off again.

  “What do we even do?” Bhati asked. “The Feds have had him in witness protection. There’s no active warrant on him. He’s just… a guy now. I don’t mean to speak out of turn, sir, but why are we here?”

  “First,” Tanner said. “He’s not just a man. He’s a monster. Three confirmed kills, and two more suspected. Plus all the lives he ruined. And what, he gets to skate because he dimed somebody out? It’s a miscarriage of justice.”

  “Right, but we’re not going after him just to go after him.” Bhati looked at Tanner and raised an eyebrow. “Are we?”

  The scorched smell from the heater was overwhelming. Tanner noticed, too. He reached down and clicked it off, the red glow of the coils fading.

  “He killed my partner,” Tanner said.

  Bhati paused.

  That was a violation not to be taken lightly.

  “If you have new evidence…” Bhati started.

  Tanner put his hand up. “I’m the detective. You’re the officer. Let’s do the job and then we can go home, okay?”

  Bhati nodded, put the headphones back on her head.

  But she couldn’t ignore the feeling that was prodding her. Because the more she thought about it, the more she had to question the circumstances that evening. As a member of the intelligence division, she’d done dozens of stakeouts, and all of them included a lot of planning, as well as a good bit of paperwork to sign out the van and the equipment.

  Tonight was different.

  Tanner approached her at her desk. He asked for her help on a special assignment. The van was pa
rked around the street from the precinct, not in the depot. She went along because Tanner had been on the job since before she was born, and she had no reason to doubt him.

  But something wasn’t adding up.

  “Sir,” Bhati asked. “I don’t mean to be difficult. But…is this official NYPD business?”

  Tanner finally looked away from the screen. Held her gaze. His face was all sharp angles and deep shadows, the way the light from the monitors flickered across it.

  When he spoke, he did so in a quiet rumble.

  “Do the job,” he said. “I can make your life in the department a lot harder. You’re free to go, file a complaint about me, whatever. But then you’re inviting that upon yourself. Or let’s just sit here a little while longer and we can go home. Deal?”

  Bhati held his gaze.

  She knew that, sometimes, rules needed to be bent in the course of doing the right thing. But only as a last resort. Only as long as the rule would snap back into place, unbroken and intact.

  That kind of thing, she could live with.

  But this was too much. This was the kind of thing that could result in a major reprimand, if not getting kicked off the force entirely.

  She was about to push again when there was a knock on the side of the van.

  “Holy…” Tanner said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “It’s him.”

  She leaned over in her seat and saw Calabrese looking into the pinhole camera next to the door, his features fished-eyed by the lens, making the smile that much more warped.

  TANNER RAN HIS hand down his pant leg to make sure his ankle holster was in place. He hated wearing his regular holster on stakeouts, since he spent most of the time hunched over, and it dug into his ribs.

  After he confirmed everything was where it should be, he slid the door open.

  Most days, the memory burned a small hole in his gut.

  But seeing Calabrese standing there, it hit him full-on.

  Reggie Sacks bleeding out from a bullet to the throat on a filthy warehouse floor. Trying to speak, but nothing coming out of his mouth but blood and wet gurgles.

  Tanner didn’t see Calabrese pull the trigger. Didn’t even see him at the scene. But they’d been following him for weeks, trying to put together enough evidence for a RICO case that would cripple the Calabrese family.