by CD Reiss
The vending machine wasn’t interesting. The memory of my resistance to Antonio was, as was the sobbing of the woman next to it as she crumpled a bunch of papers in her hand. That was why I was attracted to the machine. It wasn’t the memory of Antonio or the brightly packaged non-food. It was the woman. It was Valentina.
My ribs took on a life of their own, squeezing the air from my lungs as if I couldn’t breathe without the help.
She wasn’t supposed to be sitting on a blue plastic chair by herself, crying. Antonio wouldn’t leave her like that. Not for a minute. Not for as long as it took me to stare at a bunch of snacks.
That only meant one thing.
Donna Maria had been telling the truth. She had him.
“Valentina?” I sat and said her name at the same time, putting my arm around her. “Where’s Antonio?”
She looked up and saw me, her eyes at the bottom of deep, salty puddles. She rattled something off in Italian, hands waving, mouth wet with tears and spit. I looked around the room. Sick grandmothers. Wailing babies. One woman so pale I thought she was wearing a mask. No one cared that a beautiful woman was crying her eyes out.
“Valentina, English, please. Antonio? He was coming to get you. Have you seen him?”
She shook her head. Spit out more Italian. All I understood was the name “Tonio” and the emotion, which read something between regret and resignation.
She wasn’t functioning, and more than anything, I needed her to function, at least well enough to tell me that Antonio had left us both for a life on the run, or a third woman, or some other attempt at vengeance. I didn’t even care what it was. Didn’t even worry about “us” but about the worst-case scenario, which I refused to even tell her.
I set her papers aside and took her hands. I tried to remember his voice, his tone, how he broke through her walls of panic and despair.
“Shh, Tina, tesoro. Shhh. Cinque secondi. Non dire nulla. Respira.”
She heard me. She must have. She took a breath through her mouth. It hitched, choked, but I saw the concentration in her face. She looked right at me, as if trying to seek out strength in me she didn’t have for herself. I tried to project Antonio-like confidence as I made a show of taking another deep breath. She followed, her second breath hitching that much less.
“Bene,” I said. “Another.”
We breathed together three more times. She swallowed. Breathed. Sniffed. Dug an overused tissue out of her sweater sleeve and wiped her nose. When she looked at me again and sucked her lips between her teeth as if there was something she wanted to say but was now calm enough to be ashamed of, I panicked.
“Okay. Tell me. Do you know where Antonio is?” In my heart, I still hoped she was crying because he’d broken her heart, not because I liked seeing her hurt but because the other option was terrifying.
“I don’t know.” Her face started melting again.
I squeezed her hands so hard it must have hurt. At least, that was the intention. “Have you seen him?”
“No.”
I needed an open-ended question that went away from Antonio and back to what Valentina knew.
“Why are you crying?” I asked.
“I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“First Daniel. Did they kill Daniel?”
Who? Daniel? That had been years ago. I had to shake myself from thoughts of Antonio to remind myself of the last time she’d seen Daniel. He had been hanging upside down from a beam in his ceiling. Then I pictured on the floor, face red, grey strips of duct tape glue on his cheek.
“He’s all right. We got to him.”
She broke down in fresh tears that didn’t have sorrow or desperation in them, only relief. She put her head in her hands, and I stroked her back. I didn’t have a second to let her release, but I didn’t have a choice but to let her feel it.
“He’s fine,” I said softly. “He has a headache.”
“They took me away. And my heart gave out. It does when I have stress. They didn’t know whether to bother letting me live. They had me in the room.” Her arm went straight, pointing at the place she was describing, which may or may not have been in that direction. “They didn’t know I have some English. So I just listened. I tried not to give away my face. And they were saying…”
She was going to break down again.
“Stay with me,” I said.
“They had him go to the wrong room. They were going to take him away and…” She tilted her head and pivoted her hand around her wrist as if trying to think of a word. “Sbudellarlo.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
She made her fingers into a plane and pointed the edge of it toward herself, moving her hand up and down. “Cut him open. My sweet husband.”
She broke apart again, and no amount of breathing was going to get her back. She fell into my arms even though I was in no condition to comfort or soothe her. I just stared at the side of the vending machine, eyes wide and blank. The personality I’d cultivated for thirty years poured out of me, and I was empty. Nothing but a vessel for that other self I’d just discovered. The animal. The huntress. The savage. Though I thought that primitive woman would rend everything in her sight to achieve her ends, she surprised me. A cold calm took the place where panic and uncertainty would have been.
I was a stone. In part, I had to be or I’d break, thinking of Antonio dying. But also, if I was to avenge him, I had no time to turn into Valentina.
I took Valentina by the chin and forced her to look at me. “I’m putting you in a cab to Zia’s. You stay with her.”
Her head shook as much as my fingers allowed.
I let go of her chin. “You can go somewhere else beside Zia’s, but—”
“Where are you going?” she interrupted.
“To find him.”
“Where?”
If I said “Wilshire and Western” or “under Santa Monica pier,” she wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I could have made up anything and at least answered the question to her satisfaction, but she was illuminating a point. I didn’t know where I was looking.
And she knew it. The bitch. She looked at me with a smug little face I wanted to crack open.
“You know,” I said.
“I want to tell the men. This is not the place for us. You’re going to get him killed.”
“The men?” I set my voice to a sotto growl. “They abandoned him. They sold him. Every one of them.”
Except Otto. Maybe. He was I-didn’t-even-know-where at that point.
“They said it though?” I asked. “They said where they were taking him? They said the whole plan?”
“All of them?” she asked by way of an answer. “There isn’t one of his men to talk to?”
“No. Did they say it in front of you? Just tell me what they said without the particulars.”
“We should call his father then.”
Was she serious? She wanted to call a man across the world who may or may not have approved his son’s assassination? She needed to go back to the fabric factory.
“I don’t have a cell,” I said, and the ridiculousness of her idea seemed to hit her.
She looked helpless again, trying to twist her mind around matters that were beyond her scope. She was an innocent. A nag and a righteous poseur, but not evil. And not particularly direct or approachable when sober. She was a traditional girl with traditional ideas about what she could do by herself.
“How far away is Whittier?” she asked.
I didn’t react. I didn’t let blood flow to my face or shift my posture. Instead, I shrugged.
“We’re on the west side of LA, more or less,” I said casually. “Whittier’s on the east side, over the river. But not too far over.”
“Are there trees?”
“The preserve has trees.”
“They were arguing about whether to hang him from a tree or do it at the compound? I pretended to be asleep. What they were saying? It was sick. My heart
was sick. Even thinking of it now. I want to throw up.”
She wasn’t alone.
“Whose compound?”
“If I tell you, I want to be sick again. I want to tell someone who can stop it from happening.”
“Whose compound?” I repeated, throat dry, ears pounding, adrenaline making it nearlu impossible to stay still.
“The old woman.”
That was enough. I had it.
Breathe.
Touch St. Christopher.
Run. Run for the phone like a long-limbed animal on the Serengeti. Run like everything you love is on fire. Break the ground beneath your feet with the power of your steps. Stretch your gait past the length of your entire body. Fold space with your speed. Breath fire. Eat air. Take off. Fly.
I was going so fast, I slammed into a bank of phones on the back side of the Sequoia parking lot. First one broken. Second dead. The third had gum in the change slot. I picked it out. It wasn’t quite hard yet. I spit on it. Pulled it off.
I had Daniel’s two jukebox quarters. I jammed one in the slot. Pushed it past the sticky residue with the second quarter. They both fell in.
I stopped myself before I touched the keys. I had to dial right because I didn’t have more quarters.
Twoonethreesevenfourtwothreethreeohnine.
Ring.
Ring.
“Daniel?”
The sheets rustled. “Theresa. What time is it? Where are you?”
“Late. Early. I need your help. Like, now.”
He took a deep, waking-up type breath. “Yes. Okay. I was worried about you.”
“Valentina’s here.”
“You found her?” He jumped at the chance to ask, “Is she all right?”
I caught sight of Antonio’s wife scuttling toward me. “She’s fine. She asked about you.” I didn’t know why I felt the need to soothe Daniel’s ego. Maybe I needed to feel something positive in the middle of a shit storm, or maybe I needed a coin of goodwill in a pocketful of resentment.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“It’s… I mean it’s so bad. There are so many moving parts. You just have to trust me. They have Antonio at Donna Maria’s. They’re going to kill him, or they’ve killed him already.”
A breath. More sheets rustling. “Theresa, I can’t do much. My credibility is shot.”
“I can’t get there. I don’t even know where it is.”
More sheets. A crisper voice. “She lives in the preserve, past the federal parkland. It’s a point of contention, but slow down. How do you know?”
“Valentina overheard them. Please, please, I’ll tell you everything. I’ll tell you how I know. I’ll tell you about Paulie. Just get someone over there.”
“That’s the problem. It’s not accessible to local authorities. It’s three miles into Turner Canyon.”
“You can’t call federal marshals? Are you serious?” Desperation forced my voice a few octaves higher.
“If I send them, anything they find could land him in a courtroom.”
“Save his life, Daniel. Please.”
“How did it all end up like this?”
“Will you or won’t you?” I needed confirmation. I needed it nailed to the wall so I could stare at it and make sure it was real.
“I’ll try. I’ll make the calls. I’ll throw my weight around. What little I have left. Just… she overheard them? What did she overhear? I can’t send them without a reason.”
“Sbudellarlo,” I said. The phone clicked. I didn’t know why. I’d used a payphone twice in my life.
“Ah, I heard of that when I prosecuted the Taorminas. I’m sorry. I kind of liked him after the other day.”
“Don’t you ever speak about him in the past tense,” I growled, but he said nothing. “Daniel? Daniel?”
The phone was dead. My money had run out.
forty-five.
theresa
need your car keys,” I said.
I had to get somewhere quickly in Los Angeles, and I had no car.
Margie wasn’t taking the urgency seriously, arms folded, sensible shoe tapping the hospital linoleum. “Why?”
“Because.”
“That car is registered to me. If it’s going to be used in the commission of a crime, I could get disbarred.”
“Give me the keys and report it stolen. But give me half an hour to get across town.”
“You just admitted you’re committing a crime.”
“I did not. I was trying to make you feel better. I’m going home. I’m going to bed. I’ll be back in the morning to visit Jonathan.”
She twisted her bag around so she could reach inside and yanked out a string of keys. She popped off a black key fob and put it in my outstretched hand.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Leave me some gas.”
I walked away.
“Theresa,” she called, and I turned. “Your jacket. In the back.”
I reached behind me and felt cold metal. My jacket had slipped behind the gun, exposing it. I didn’t thank her. I just got into the elevator.
She got in front of the doors. “Theresa.”
“It’s all right. I’m just tired.”
“Be good. As good as you can be. Okay?”
I was about to promise her I’d be good, but the doors closed before I could lie.
forty-six.
theresa
alentina had been waiting in the lobby like a lost puppy I couldn’t get rid of. She’d gotten in step behind me and followed me to Margie’s car.
I thought of shaking her but decided against it. She was a grown woman, and I didn’t have time. She got in the car as if I’d said it was all right, her sense of entitlement as unshakeable as a holy sacrament.
“He could be already dead,” she said from the passenger seat.
I got hot everywhere. My hands. My back. My face must have been a searing shade of purple. I’d never felt so angry in the face of the sheer emptiness of the world.
I was supposed to do something when I felt like that. Breathe. Respira. Touch the St. Christopher medal.
Of course, touching the medal did nothing. It did not fix the situation. It did not change the danger Antonio was in or transmit his whereabouts into my head. It only reminded me that I was capable of anything, and that even in my savagery, I was a child of the universe and loved by God.
That’s all.
I tapped the GPS on the dash, getting a satellite picture of the slice of wilderness between Whittier and Hacienda Heights. Take the 10 east to the 605 South. Off on Beverly. Left. Right. Left onto a dirt road, along a drive into a nondescript house with no address. That had to be the one. It was the only structure in the area large enough to be a house and small enough to be hidden.
“What will you do if he is?” she asked. “Dead, that is.”
“Kill all of them.” I didn’t check for her reaction. If she got to ask off-the-cuff questions about what I’d do with my life, then I got to answer in the immediate.
The 10 was empty, but I stayed a little over the speed limit. Getting pulled over wouldn’t get me there any quicker, and I had a loaded gun in the glove compartment.
“Do you know how many men he’s killed?” she asked. “Would you like to count? How many wives he left crying? How many children he left without fathers? This isn’t something we have to like, but maybe it’s justice.”
“You left your own son without a father. Where’s justice for you?”
“Antonin is better off.”
I didn’t know how to get through to her. I didn’t know what to say, because she was right. Antonio had been damned before he ever set eyes on me. He’d made years’ worth of choices that were beyond deplorable. He’d let his rage set his mind to murder again and again, trying to set the scales straight and only making the weight of his crimes greater and greater. There would be no forgiveness for him, not in this world or the next.
“You said he was sweet when you met,” I said.
/>
“He was so nice,” she said wistfully. Had she been like this when they met? Or had he destroyed her too?
“He said you were gentle. He said you were innocent and beautiful. I think he thought you could save him,” I said.
“I kept trying.”
“And he kept getting worse.”
She nodded.
“He’s done everything wrong,” I said. “I know he has. He was in the life, and he killed… I don’t even know how many men inside his organization. Too many. One is too many. I’m not excusing it. But I think he can be saved. I think we can get that man back. The one you married. Maybe not totally. He’ll never forget these years. But that man who brought you strawberries and was gentle and kind? He’s still in there, and I think he’s ready to be free.”
“I’m so confused.”
“You’re right to be.”
“Do you think he can come back?”
“I do.” I didn’t warn her that he wasn’t coming back to her, and if he did, then she and I would have a deep, long-standing problem. “He was trying to get out of the life. There’s nothing he wants more than an end to it.”
“I wish he really was dead,” she said, staring at the edge of the morning skyline. It wasn’t even close to sunrise, and the city was as quiet as it ever was.
“Yeah, I get that.”
I did truly understand. She’d come to Los Angeles to pay respects to a husband she hadn’t seen in ten years and wound up at the center of a mob war over a bride he’d abandoned for another woman. If he’d been dead, she’d have closure. If he’d been dead, she could grieve and let go. He’d never change. He would be the subject of her prayers for years to come. I saw her so clearly, and I felt nothing but compassion.
