by Billy Taylor
We filed out of the building, and as we gathered on the Great Lawn to light candles and sing “Amazing Grace” I rushed up to Claire.
“My family’s here,” I whispered.
“You mean here here?” She turned to face the crowd coming out of the auditorium. “Where?”
“Stop looking around so much. I don’t want them to see me talking to you. Can you pick me up behind the storage facility in fifteen minutes?”
“Of course.”
“What about your parents?”
“I’ll tell them to meet us at the restaurant. Are you going to be okay?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t have much of a choice.”
I squeezed Claire’s hand and raced toward the dorms. It took Roy less than a minute to catch up and guide me to the visitor’s parking lot where we were joined by the rest of my family.
“I’m so proud of you,” my mother said, giving me the world’s biggest hug. “That presentation was incredibly moving.”
“Thanks, Ma. Coming from you that really means a lot.”
I glanced past her and smiled at Uncle Wonderful.
“Hello, Skipper,” he said.
“Hi, Uncle Wonderful. Did the Feds give you the day off, or did you sneak out of jail in a laundry hamper?”
“The Feds never had me, you rube. I can’t believe you actually fell for that.”
“Me neither,” I said with a sigh.
My mother let go of me, and I turned to face my cousin.
“So, Roy, was that cop who chased you down Ocean Parkway bogus, too?”
“No, the cop was real. Lucky for me, I lost him in the boat basin. Vinny had to come and rescue me.”
“How is the Vinster?” I asked.
“In rehab.”
“Glad to hear he’s finally getting his act together.”
“Not even close. It was either that, or ninety days in County. Now he’s dealing meth to the other patients and making more money than ever.”
“Enough catching up,” Uncle Wonderful shouted. “Tell us where your storage space is.”
I took a deep breath and said, “Storage space? What storage space?”
“The one you told me about in the ambulance,” my mother replied. “You remember, dear.”
“You mean right before you tried to strangle me?”
“That’s right.”
I pretended to debate the pros and cons of telling them the location when Roy pulled out his gun and said, “C’mon, Skip. I have tickets to a Rangers game tonight.”
“Fine,” I said. “But I get to keep a quarter of the money.”
“You get nothing,” Uncle Wonderful hissed. “Now tell us where it is, or I’ll have Roy shoot you right here and now.”
I made a move like I was going to knock the false teeth out of Uncle Wonderful’s mouth, and Roy grabbed me from behind.
“Don’t even think about it.”
I pulled myself free and said, “Fine. It’s ten miles south of here in Rensselaer. Get on the Northway, and I’ll show you from there.”
My mother and Uncle Wonderful climbed in the front of the car, and Roy and I got in the back. We pulled out of the parking lot, and I looked out the rear window to see my entire class singing “Amazing Grace.” I should have been there with them, and that’s when it struck me that my family’s biggest crime wasn’t scamming welfare checks or stealing DVD collections. It was robbing me of a childhood.
Wheaton disappeared in the distance, and I turned to face my mother. “So, did you really date Mr. DeNunsio, or was that a lie, too?”
“Really, Sonny. What kind of question is that?”
“I think it’s pretty straightforward.”
“Maybe,” she said with a shrug. “But he wasn’t the only man I was seeing at the time.”
“Let me guess. The other two were a diesel mechanic and an Irish tenor.”
“Am I the one telling this story, or are you?”
“Sorry.”
She brushed my apology away and said, “It doesn’t matter anyway. The only thing that mattered was that Sal was living at Shady Oaks, and there was a possibility you could be his son.”
“Don’t you mean Chaz?”
“Who’s Chaz?” my mother asked.
“Nobody,” I replied. “Nobody at all.”
And that was the final piece of the puzzle. My mother had no idea who her old boyfriend really was which meant that Chaz had been running the show all along. He must have seen my mother’s con coming from a mile away and came up with the story about killing Fat Nicky so my family wouldn’t guess his true identity. My mother took the bait, Uncle Wonderful dragged me back to Long Island, and they set me up to kill a man.
Anger flared up inside me, and I debated jumping out of the car. We were going sixty miles an hour and I might have gotten killed, but it was better than spending another moment with my family. I checked the sideview mirror, grabbed the door handle, and—
Nothing happened.
“Kiddie locks,” Uncle Wonderful announced. “They keep the little ones from falling onto the highway.”
My family had thought of everything.
Five minutes later we pulled off the Northway and I said, “See that big blue sign coming up on the right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s the place. Go around back. It’s locker number seventeen.”
It was total overkill to rent a ten-by-twenty-foot storage locker to hide a pair of bags that could have easily fit under my bed, but the storage facility was only an eighth of a mile from Interstate 90. If things went south, I could make a run for it and be on the highway in less than two minutes.
“How much you paying for this thing?” Roy asked as we pulled up to the locker.
“One hundred and forty-three a month plus tax.”
“You’re getting robbed. My friend Johnny Gillespie would have charged you less than a hundred.”
“I’ll have to remember that next time I need to hide something from you.”
“Just open the damn thing already,” Uncle Wonderful growled.
I climbed out of the car, and Roy followed me with his gun at my back.
“Do you really need that?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Don’t do anything silly, Sonny,” my mother called out. “I’d hate for something bad to happen to you.”
I glanced back at my family and could almost see the saliva dribbling down their chins. They’d been waiting for this moment for years, and each of them thought they deserved what was inside that locker.
And you know what? They were right.
I pulled up the door and a shaft of sunlight revealed two duffel bags sitting in the middle of the room. “There they are,” I said. “Knock yourselves out.”
Uncle Wonderful stepped forward. “No, you open them.”
“Suit yourself.”
I unzipped the first bag to reveal the money, and a couple of feathers floated out.
“Holy macaroni,” my mother said. “There must be a million bucks in there.”
“One point two, to be precise.”
My family stood there speechless, and for a moment I thought they were going to dive in the bag and start rubbing the money all over themselves. I took advantage of their distraction to take a step closer to the second bag. Two more steps, and I could grab it and be on Interstate 90 before they knew what hit them.
“Let’s split it up now,” Roy said.
“No,” my mother and Uncle Wonderful said simultaneously. “Back at home.”
“Then at least give me one stack,” Roy said. “I’m going to the city tonight.”
My mother shook her head. “Not until we count it and decide how to divvy it up.”
“What’s to decide?” Roy asked. “One po
int two divided three ways is four hundred grand each. Subtract ten Gs for the stack I’m taking to the city, and that’s four hundred for you two, and three hundred and ninety for me.”
“Who said we were splitting it evenly?” Uncle Wonderful said.
“Wait a minute!” Roy shouted. “I’m entitled to just as much as you are.”
This was my opening, and I grabbed the second bag. I turned to run, and the next thing I knew I was lying on the ground with blood pouring from my nose. I looked up, and my mother was rubbing her fist.
“You shouldn’t have done that, dear.”
“Why not?” I asked. “It’s what you would have done.”
“Do as I say, and not as I do,” she said, and took the bag from my hand. She opened it and pulled out two Ziploc bags. One contained Uncle Wonderful’s gun and Mr. DeNunsio’s glass, and the other contained her good name.
“You should really take better care of your things,” she said, handing the Ziploc with the gun to her brother.
Uncle Wonderful stared at the bloody Walther with a combination of fear and awe. “Damn,” he said. “You really killed that guy. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“At least somebody in this family does.”
“We’ll see about that,” he said, and pulled the gun from the Ziploc bag. He checked to make sure it was loaded and turned to my mother.
“Get in the car, Sheila. Put the money in the trunk and wait for me.”
Roy and my mother did as they were told, and Uncle Wonderful aimed the Walther at my chipped tooth. I stared down the barrel and wondered if there was another way I could have played my hand, if there was something else I could have done to escape from my family without stealing Grandpa Patsy’s money.
“Just out of curiosity,” I asked. “Do you think we would have ended up like this if I had stayed on Long Island?”
“Woulda, shoulda, coulda,” he replied. “Besides, you were never really one of us.”
I didn’t think Uncle Wonderful had the guts to shoot me, which was why I was almost as surprised as he was when he pulled the trigger. Lucky for me, the gun was still loaded with the blanks I’d put in it on the night I went to “kill” Fat Nicky. As Uncle Wonderful stood there dumbfounded, I reached into a darkened corner of the storage locker for my lacrosse stick. This time it was right where it was supposed to be, and I knocked him to the ground with one swing. I heard a car door open and spun around to see Roy racing toward me with his pistol. I took a step to the right, and as he raised his arm to fire, I swung my lacrosse stick and caught the gun in the net.
“Okay,” I said, grabbing the gun and pointing it at him. “Get in the locker with your father.”
“Look, Skip, I—”
“Save it, Roy. I shot Louie Jingo, and I’ll shoot you, too.” Then I turned to my mother and said, “Get out of the car and get inside the locker.”
“Thank God you’re all right, Sonny. I don’t know what I would have done if something bad happened to you.”
“Just get in the locker.”
After they were all inside, I grabbed the door handle and said, “A guard comes by every ninety minutes. Bang loud and he’ll find you.”
“What about the money?” Roy asked.
“Keep it,” I said. “It’s a down payment for leaving me alone the rest of my life.”
My mother started to say something, but I didn’t want to hear it and pulled the locker door shut. I was tempted to break the key off in the lock, but thought better of it and ran behind the storage facility to where Claire was waiting for me in her car.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“They tried to kill me,” I said. “My own family tried to kill me.”
“Jesus!” Claire said. “I had no idea they’d do something that crazy.” Then she wrapped her arms around me and said, “If it’s any consolation, I promise my parents won’t try to kill you.”
“That’s reassuring,” I said, and Claire put the car in gear.
From the New York Post:
FBI Nabs Three Crooks in Decades-Old Heist
This morning Federal agents announced the arrest of two suspects in a 1995 robbery and shooting of an undercover agent. Philip O’Rourke, 57, and Sheila O’Rourke, 53, were apprehended in predawn raids in Copiague and Amityville. Also arrested was Royston Patrick O’Rourke, 22. All three possessed bills from the robbery which they had only recently begun spending. Agents say the case was cracked when the younger O’Rourke dropped over ten thousand dollars in marked bills at a Manhattan strip club.
If convicted, Philip and Sheila O’Rourke face a maximum of twenty-five years to life in prison for the shooting of a federal agent, while Royston O’Rourke is looking at five years for possession of the stolen cash, not to mention being an idiot. When asked why the trio would wait over ten years to pass the money, Special Agent Richard McMahon replied, “They’re a pack of weasels. Who knows why they do what they do?”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Uwe Stender, my agent at TriadaUS, is the greatest guy in the world and the reason you are reading these words. Brent Taylor, also at TriadaUS, is the most enthusiastic reader imaginable and a fantastic agent in his own right. Namrata Tripathi, my editor at Dial Books for Young Readers, is a gift from the literary gods and made this book far better than I ever thought possible. Stacey Friedberg, also at Dial, is a backstage ninja with a black belt in awesomeness. David Liss is the best friend a writer could ever have. Period. My wife, Anne, deserves to bathe in a tub filled with diamonds every night for all the help she gave me with this project. My children, Liam and Kate, fill me with joy and giggles on an almost hourly basis. And Mom, I miss you terribly.
BILLY TAYLOR is the author of the adult novel Based on the Movie. He is a graduate of the Film Program at SUNY Purchase and the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Before turning his hand to writing, he worked as a dolly grip on dozens of movies and TV shows, including Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and My Cousin Vinny. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife, Anne, and two amazing children, Liam and Kate. Visit him online at billytaylor.com.
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