“The good news is that the floors are in good shape,” I said aloud. “The bad news is…” I looked around. “Everything else.” The walls were a filthy peach color, but the plaster wasn’t bad. The windows were covered with twenty years’ worth of grime. The closet probably housed dead animal carcasses beneath the piles of old newspapers and trash, and the adjoining bathroom was almost a total loss.
I wandered down to the kitchen in search of paper and pen to start detailing a supply list, and noticed the answering machine light blinking.
“What now, huh?” I groused, and hit the playback button.
“Ms. Mazaratti, this is Shirley Garwood at Duncan Elementary. The central office forwarded your résumé to me and I would like to speak with you tomorrow morning at 9:30, if that’s convenient. I know it’s short notice, but I’m trying to leave town for vacation and would really like to finish staffing the school before I go. The number here is…”
I scrambled frantically for a pen, scribbling her number on a piece of paper towel and then picking up the receiver to call the woman back. I’d gotten wrapped up in renovating my house and completely forgotten that I’d sent my résumé out to the school district’s office. I reached the school’s answering machine, confirmed my appointment and hung up. It was 7:15.
By eight, I was showered, dressed in a navy-blue suit and pumps, and ready to go bowl Principal Garwood over with my experience, charm and credentials. Then I remembered I had no car. I sank down into a kitchen chair and cradled my head in my hands. “Some days it does not pay to get up,” I moaned.
I wasted another twenty minutes calling the insurance company and then the car rental agency. The rental agency had cars, all right, but they couldn’t deliver one until after noon.
I grabbed the phone book and began looking up cab companies. “Shit! I’m not going to make it!” I said, letting the sound of my voice echo off the kitchen walls.
“Hey, watch the mouth, Sophia Maria!” Joey stood framed in the back porch doorway, his oldest, Emily, behind him. “What’s the matter with you, a kindergarten teacher talking like a longshoreman?”
“Sorry, Em,” I said, glancing at my niece. “I didn’t know anybody was around.”
Joey’s shy daughter gave a tiny little grin that lit her eyes and just as quickly disappeared. Joey stepped into the kitchen and helped himself to a cup of coffee.
“What’s with the drug addict you got working in the backyard?” he asked. “I thought we were gonna work on that, me and you.”
“Joey, do not make assumptions like that. She isn’t a drug addict. She’s just down on her luck, so I gave her a job.”
Emily returned, but didn’t say a word. She was staring out the kitchen window, apparently making up her own mind about Della. “Cute dog,” she said softly.
“See, Joey?” I said. “How can a girl with a cute dog be all bad?”
Joey sighed. “Stunade!”
I noticed Joey and Emily were both dressed in old clothes and wearing work boots and ball caps.
“You guys incognito today or what?” I said, indicating their outfits. “Is it Blue Collar Day at the college?”
“Hey!” Joey said. “Have some respect for my institution. It’s summer. The boys left for camp yesterday and Angela’s working. We’re bored, so here we are, ready to help.”
Emily didn’t seem at all enthusiastic.
“You’re not teaching summer school?” I asked my brother. “Must be nice!”
“I’m a college professor,” he said. “Everybody knows we don’t work. Besides, summer school doesn’t start till next week. I’m taking a few days off.”
I looked at Joey and knew he was lying. Joey can never look you in the eye when he lies. It’s all that time spent as an acolyte. It ruins you for lying.
“Gray called you, didn’t he?”
Joey studied the contents of his coffee cup. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Soph.”
“Joey, you already know what’s in your coffee cup. Look me in the eye and tell me, did Gray call you?”
Joey exhaled loudly and looked up at me. “Yeah, so he called, but that isn’t why I’m here. I’m here to help.”
“All right, Joey,” I said. “You want to help? Good, because I have a job interview in twenty minutes and I don’t have a car. You can lend me yours. On my way back from the interview, I’ll swing by Home Depot, pick out paint, a kit to turn that decrepit tub into a shower and a mirror. Then I’ll come here, pick you two up and you can drop me and Emily off at the car rental place before you help Pa install the fixtures.”
“Pa’s coming?” Joey asked.
“I figure he will after you call him and tell him you need some help.”
Alarm was beginning to grow in my brother’s eyes. “What are you two gonna be doing while we’re working?” he asked.
I grinned at Emily. “Shopping,” I said. “I need a bedroom ensemble, new sheets, a comforter, pillows, curtains and any other doodads my niece and I come up with.”
Joey took a big swallow of coffee. “All right,” he said. “I give up. Here’re the keys.”
I snatched them out of his hand, grabbed my portfolio and ran for the door. I flew across town, turning into the parking lot behind Duncan Elementary School with only three minutes to spare. It was barely enough time to reapply my lipstick and certainly not enough time to deal with the man in the car that had suddenly materialized behind me.
I took my time pretending to inspect my appearance in the rearview mirror, hoping the guy was an employee and not what he appeared to be, which was trouble.
I looked up at the school. An elderly Mercedes sedan was the only car in the lot and it was parked right beside the front door. Principal Garwood was probably the only one working. I glanced in the mirror again and tried to determine the size of the man in the front seat, but he was just far enough away to make the details impossible. One thing was for certain, it wasn’t Nick behind the wheel, not unless he’d grown both wider and taller.
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment and cleared my head. This was not necessarily a bad situation. I needed to find Nick. I needed to know what everyone seemed to be looking for and I needed to know who was looking. I could either wait for them to come to me or I could bait the trap and go on the offensive.
“No time like now,” I whispered, and slowly opened the car door.
I stepped out onto the pavement, gazed up at the school and then deliberately avoided looking at the car behind me. I walked to the trunk of Joey’s Toyota, unlocked it and raised the lid. It made a perfect cover for a mugging, keeping anyone inside the school from seeing me clearly and thereby giving my follower the opportunity to approach. I had no doubt that catching me alone was on the agenda.
I leaned deep into the trunk, well aware that the slit in my tight pencil skirt left plenty of leg exposed. I made a show of tossing things around and appearing to search for something with great concentration. I was prey.
I looked in the chrome reflection of the trunk lid, studying the car behind me. The driver’s side was now empty. I saw him coming for me, moving quickly, and readied myself for the confrontation.
I waited until he was almost upon me before turning, my fingers laced together, arms held stiffly in front of my body, my elbows locked to form a human sledgehammer. I swung as I turned, bringing my fists up to hit him dead center beneath his chin. His teeth chattered as the blow caught him off guard, and the fight was on.
He had a gun but I had the training to disarm him and the adrenaline to complete the task. I grabbed his right forearm with both hands, twisted his wrist and turned into him, pulling his arm down onto my thigh, slamming his wrist sharply against the bone and then watching as the gun flew out of his fingers.
He was everything Nick wasn’t—strong, mean and completely capable of killing me—but he was no match for a year of intense Krav Maga training. I jerked my knee up hard into his crotch, giving it every ounce of force I could muste
r, and brought him down to the hard surface of the parking lot. It was late June; the asphalt was smoking hot despite the relatively early hour, and my attacker shrieked as I grabbed a hunk of his hair and drove his head, face-first, into the gravel-and-tar griddle.
I straddled his back, my skirt forced to ride well up my thighs, and leaned forward to apply pressure to his carotid artery. It was, I’ll admit, overkill, but I wasn’t taking chances.
“Did Nick send you?” I asked.
The thug moaned and retched, sick from the blow to his testicles.
“Don’t even think about hurling on my new pumps,” I warned him. “I’ve got a job interview and you’re making me late.”
My captive said something unintelligible.
“Where is Nick?”
This time he made himself understood. “I don’t know.”
I laughed, the adrenaline rush bringing me close to hysteria. “Did he send you?”
“No!” This time it was more of a howl than a moan.
He was getting ready to fight again. I could feel the muscles tensing beneath me as he marshaled his strength.
“You don’t want to do that,” I said, rocking forward to grind his face harder into the ground. “Now,” I said, feeling the fight ebb out of him, “if Nick didn’t send you, who did?”
There was silence until I hit the painful pressure point behind his jaw with my thumb.
“All right, all right! Ease up! I’m just doin’ what I get paid to do. I get a phone call from a guy. He says there’s money in it for me if I come down here and get what you’re holding for Nick.”
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know,” the man whined. “He didn’t tell me. He just said to watch for Nick and take anything he got from you. He said if Nick didn’t show I was to put it to you until you handed it over. He said you’d know what it was.”
I rocked forward on the man’s head again, ignoring his shriek of pain, and leaned down close to his ear.
“This is your lucky day,” I said softly. I reached out and touched the spot behind his jaw, waited until I knew he was losing consciousness, and then released my hold. “I could kill you and it wouldn’t take any effort at all, but I’m gonna let you go on account of I want you to take a message back to your boss.”
When the man didn’t say anything, I continued. “Tell him to back the fuck off. I don’t have what he wants and I don’t know where Nick is. Tell him I’ll kill the next one he sends.”
The man moaned.
“Should I take that for a yes?” I asked.
Before he could answer, we were interrupted.
“What in the world is going on here?”
A tall, middle-aged woman holding a baseball bat in one hand and a can of Mace in the other stopped a few feet from us, watching warily as she slowly raised the spray and pointed it at my attacker’s head.
“Ms. Garwood?” I asked.
“Doctor Garwood. And you are?”
“Sophia Mazaratti.”
Shirley Garwood’s eyes widened slightly and she nodded to the man on the ground. “And this gentleman?”
“I don’t know. I think he wanted my purse, but don’t worry. He realizes now he made a mistake, don’t you?” I said, tightening my grip on his collar.
“Yes, ma’am,” the thug moaned.
Dr. Garwood’s finger tightened on the Mace trigger. “I’ll call the police,” she said. She turned to run inside, stopped and looked back at me anxiously. “Will you be all right if I do that or should I spray him?”
I smiled up at her. “We’ll be fine,” I said. “I handle these sorts of situations all the time.”
She nodded. “I heard the Philadelphia schools were rough,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
When the principal was safely inside the building, I jumped off my attacker and pulled him to his feet.
“Get the hell out of here before she comes back,” I said, “and make sure you tell your boss what I said.”
The big man stumbled off, fell into his sedan and roared away just as the principal returned.
“They’re coming,” she said, her voice trailing off as she watched the Taurus spin out onto the street in front of the school.
“He got away,” I said, brushing gravel off my skirt.
“Are you all right?”
I nodded. “You’d better call the police back and give them a description of the car. Maybe they can catch him. I think he was driving a late model Lexus.”
Garwood nodded and dialed the number. By the time she’d finished, I had my portfolio in hand.
“Do you still want to interview me?” I asked, giving her my very best kindergarten teacher smile.
“Oh, absolutely, we could use someone like you around here!” She chuckled softly. “I hope you won’t find us too boring.”
I followed her into the school, smiling to myself. Boring…now, I could use a bit more of that in my life.
By the time I returned home from the interview, my house had been taken over by Pa and a crew of gray-haired men. Ma was in the makeshift kitchen, swearing at the microwave and hauling plastic food containers out of brown paper bags.
“Pezzo di merda! Figlio di puttana!”
“Ma!”
Ma shrugged. “You have no kitchen,” she said. “How am I to feed so many people with no kitchen?”
“Ma, what people?” I asked. But the answer was becoming evident the longer I stood there. Pa’s friend Mort trooped through the kitchen, trailed by two or three other men. They wore carpenter’s belts and were laughing at something Mort had called over his shoulder.
Ma pointed to them. “There are at least six men up there with your father and your brother. And that device, that thing, that…” Ma’s voice sputtered to a halt as she tried to conjure up the right description of my microwave. “We will have to serve antipasto and sandwiches.” She said this as if it were an indictment of her talent as a chef. She threw up her hands. “Marone a mia!”
Emily walked to her grandmother’s side, threw her arms around the little woman and kissed her cheek. “Don’t worry, Grandma,” she said. “Later we can have a party to thank them and you can cook and cook. I’ll help you.”
Ma has a soft spot for Emily. She smiled in spite of herself and turned to me. “You should take a lesson,” she said, reaching out with the lightning quick hand to smack the air near my head. I ducked and ran, leaving her and Emily to their preparations, following the sound of male voices and the smell of fresh paint that wafted down to me from the second floor.
Pa was in the bathroom, leaning over the new toilet, seating it into its final resting place, an unlit cigar hanging out of his mouth. Joey, stripped to his undershirt, was down on the floor by Pa, caulking the area around the new fixture. An unlit cigar hung from the side of his mouth, too.
They looked up briefly when I stopped in the doorway. “Rough interview, huh?” Joey asked, looking at my torn hose and dirty clothing. “Must be a rough school.”
“Flat tire,” I said, not wanting to let Pa know about my earlier adventure.
“Joseph,” Pa said, “pay attention. You’re getting the caulk everywhere.”
Joey looked away reluctantly, not ready to believe the flat tire story, and returned to caulking the toilet.
Pa watched as Joey worked, now and then nudging him if he thought Joey wasn’t doing it just right. “The old guys were over at the house this morning when Joseph called,” he said. “I brought some of them with me—hope you don’t mind.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw my bedroom transformed, with scraped and patched plaster and stripped wood trim. I felt a hard lump form in my throat and thought for a minute that I might cry.
“Pa, no, I don’t mind. How can I ever thank them?”
Pa grunted. “You can say thank you and be done with it,” he said. “Besides, it looked like rain. What else could we do? You got paint?”
“I forgot. I’ll go after I change.”
He straightened up and walked over to me, giving me The Look just like he had when I was back in Catholic school and he suspected me of not telling the whole truth.
“Sophia,” he said, his voice stern, “I got to hear it from your brother about last night. This is a great disrespect to your father.”
Great. Just great. I shot Joey a dirty look, but his back was to me. “I didn’t want to call and risk getting Ma. She doesn’t need to know about this. It’ll worry her. You two didn’t tell her, right?”
Pa looked as if he was going to whack me. “What, I look like suddenly I’m too stupid and senile to think?” Behind him I saw Joey’s shoulders move up and down with suppressed laughter. He was enjoying my agony.
“No, Pa. Nothing like that, it’s just that—”
“Fagetaboutit,” Pa said. “I want to know when you’re coming home tonight.”
I sighed. “Pa, this is my home. I’m staying here. If Nick is behind this the police will find him before he can do any more damage. I’m fine, Pa.”
“Where’s the detective?” Pa demanded.
“Working, Pa. He’s a cop, not a bodyguard.”
Pa was coated in a fine film of dirt and sweat. His arms and shoulders, the muscles ropey with age, were still broad and strong. I knew where he was headed. If I didn’t come home or come up with a plan, my father would move into my house and protect me himself. In fact, my father and all of his friends would become my new roommates.
“Pa,” Joey said, “it’s going to be fine.” I breathed a sigh of relief, thinking that Joey was going to come to my defense. “I talked to Gray this morning. He’ll be here tonight as soon as he gets off work. We’re going to stay a couple nights to make sure Sophie’s all right.”
Pa nodded. “And when you’re not here and Gray’s not here, I’ll be here,” he said, sounding like we didn’t have an option. “Me and the guys, we’ll be here.”
“Pa, you don’t need to do that. I’ll be fine!”
He switched his unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other and gave me The Look again. “You need help, Sophia. Look at this place. It’s a wreck! You got Nick chasing you down like prey and on top of that, you ain’t got a job. You think about that, Sophia? What are you gonna do for money? You can’t live on your looks forever. You need to be out hunting for a nice, safe teaching job, not hanging around this place getting in our way.”
Sophie’s Last Stand Page 11
