The Exceptions

by David Cristofano

  Peter stared at me for three seconds. “Seriously?”

  I shrugged, he walked past.

  But for the first time in my life—started in culinary school, really—I started being around people unlike myself, unlike my family, for extended periods of time. Once the restaurant turned into a full-time job, the people involved in its operation and success became full-time acquaintances, people of a (non-mob) culture who brought something to the table, no matter how bland or understated, that rubbed off on me. The changes were subtle, things as unnoticeable as wearing a different kind of pullover—“You look different, Johnny”—to a marginally different haircut to those glasses; I knew there was a small audience that would accept these changes. No one on either side could single out what the difference was, and rightfully so, no one really cared, either. The point is the change was there.

  Two worlds, on a slow path toward collision.

  I found Melody in Kentucky when I was twenty-four years old. I found her there again when I was twenty-five—twice—with the visits spaced apart by the distance between each of my headaches, the same point in every cycle of making sure she was all right and making sure she was still all right. And as always, each and every trip fell under the guise of knocking Melody off. I might’ve even tried to spy on her more than I did, except my excuses for either not finding her or not being able to take her out became flimsier with each return home.

  On my fourth trip to Lawrenceburg, Kentucky—I was now twenty-six years old, she was twenty-two—Melody disappeared. I waited for two days, the greatest length of time I could leave Sylvia alone, but her car never moved. More alarming was the appearance that it hadn’t moved in a long time. Dead leaves and tiny branches were strewn across the roof, trunk, and hood, debris that would have blown away from regular driving. The front passenger tire had gone partially flat and there were stains on the bottom quarter of each tire where rainwater had washed away the grime from the wheels—wheels that had not turned in a great while.

  Having originally planned on returning home by Friday evening, I waited out that second night, went to the Lawrenceburg post office as soon as it opened on Saturday morning, carried in an empty envelope with Melody’s—Shelly Jones’s—name and address scribbled on it in handwriting purposely written to appear unlike my own.

  I handed it to a middle-aged postal clerk and gave him my story:

  “Hope you can help me. Got a letter I’m trying to get to a friend of mine but I forgot her apartment number. I was wondering if you guys could get this to her on my behalf.”

  I handed over the letter with her last known address.

  Shelly Jones

  901 New Frankfort Road

  Lawrenceburg, KY

  40342

  The clerk studied the envelope, squinted a little, and said, “Umm, one second.” And as he walked out of sight, he yelled, “Hey, Ron?”

  The clerk disappeared for a minute, then returned with my empty envelope.

  “I can put it on her stack, f’ya like.”

  “Stack?”

  “Box at her building filled up a month ago. We’ve been ’cumulating her mail here in back.”

  “Why aren’t you forwarding it?”

  “Got no forwarding address. She just stopped picking it up. Soon we’ll have to start sending back any new mail f’her.”

  I started cracking my knuckles. “You guys call the police?”

  The clerk paused before answering, like he was waiting for me to deliver a punch line. “Not picking up your mail ain’t no crime.” He shrugged a little. “Should be.”

  I leaned on the counter, pointed at him. “Not to have her arrested. To see if she’s okay. She could be dead in there.”

  “F’real? People stop picking up their mail all the time for who knows why. Folks leave the country, take extended trips out of town, get called for military service. Sometimes they just leave and don’t worry about having their mail forwarded. Cops don’t care about that.” He shrugged again. “Should, though.”

  As I drove back to New York, I tried with all the ingenuity my mind could offer to come up with more than two scenarios, but the only possibilities to emerge were the obvious ones: Melody had been killed or Melody had been relocated. And if she’d been relocated… why?

  I didn’t drive back to my apartment. I did not go see my father and my brothers. Sylvia? Not on my mind. The doorbell I was ringing at seven-thirty that Saturday evening belonged to Randall Gardner.

  His wife answered the door of their stately colonial in an apron, looked at me like the stranger I was.

  “Randy around?”

  She paused, wiped her hands slowly on her apron. “What’s this in reference to?”

  I sighed, pinched my nose as I conjured up an answer. “It’s got to do with work. We’re having a problem at Justice that only Randy can fix.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh! One sec.”

  Randall came to the door with a near-empty glass of red wine, all dim-eyed and flushed as though that glass had not been his first. When he recognized me he cursed under his breath, glanced around the house checking for family, then pulled the door behind him as he stepped out onto the stoop.

  “Come on, man. You come to my house with no warning? You lost your freaking mind? We’ve got friends coming over in an hour and—”

  “Go back in, put the glass down, explain there’s a problem with the computers.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see a couple walking their Pomeranian.

  “You sound like an imbecile, Bovaro. You know nothing about what I do! My work is serious stuff, man. Guy like you could never understand the first thing—”

  Blah, blah, blah was all I heard. As the couple looked our way, I nodded and laughed like I loved the story Randall was telling. I let him continue his inebriated tirade, then as the couple disappeared around the corner, I slapped his face like the woman he was.

  “You think I’m gonna ask again?” I grabbed him by his collar and shoved him into his door, nailed the back of his head on the hub of the knocker. “Go back inside, make up whatever excuse you like, and be back out here in sixty seconds, or I’m coming in armed and angry, capice?”

  “All right!” He waited a second, rubbed his head. “I hate you freaking people.”

  Got to hand it to Randall: He returned in under twenty seconds, his jacket half on already. We walked to my Mustang in silence. I started the car and backed out of his driveway. I drove two blocks, still not a word between us. Then just as I approached the fringe of his neighborhood, I pulled over to the side of the road under a pair of massive sycamores and grabbed him by the back of the neck, twisted his head so we were eye to eye.

  “Don’t ever make the mistake of doing that to me again, Gardner. Next time I stop by you invite me in, treat me with respect, offer me a glass of your boxed wine, and introduce me as a friend. I don’t care if it’s three in the morning. And I don’t ever want to hear your grumblings about me showing up on your doorstep, because I remember when you showed up on ours, tears pouring down your face and slobber running out of your mouth as you begged my family for mercy, then begged us for more money. Know what Pete wanted to do? Wanted to cut you loose. Said you were a loser. Asked my father if we could drag your ass out to the alley, beat you, and toss you in the Dumpster like the piece of trash you are. Know who prevented that? Me, Randall. I did. I said we shouldn’t, that you might serve some purpose for us in the future. Sure enough, you did. And you still got your nice family and nice place out here in the burbs. But understand, Gardner, you need to keep serving that purpose. Because once you don’t anymore, I’m gonna let Pete get some exercise on you, you friggin’ minchione. I’m telling you right now—and this is a promise—you will not outlive your usefulness.”

  Randall yanked his head from my grip. “You ever think about what I have on you guys, huh? You think you’re impervious to punishment?”

  “Don’t let that wine do the talking for you, Randy, or we’re gonna
end up taking a different ride in a minute.” I could feel the rage building; I needed fast information and he was impeding my ability to get it. I considered taking the quickest way to making my point, but I really wanted to avoid getting his blood all over the interior of my car.

  “Think about who I work for!” he yelled. “I make one phone call and—”

  “Randy, let me tell you how we’ve handled gamblers who’ve troubled us in the past. We had this guy, let’s call him Chuck, lived maybe fifteen miles from here, started getting mouthy on us, considered biting the hand that fed him. Drove Peter out of his mind. We gave Chuck a real-life lesson on how odds worked. We took him to a low bridge over the Passaic River in the middle of the night, loosely tied cinder blocks to both of his feet, made him clutch the blocks to his chest as we forced him to jump off.”

  Gardner finally shut up. Two cars passed us, kicked up gravel that dinged against my door.

  “If Chuck panicked,” I continued, “those cinder blocks would keep him at the bottom of the river no matter how hard he tried to swim up. If he had presence of mind, he could try to hold his breath and undo the knots and free himself to swim to the surface.”

  Randall wiped his mouth as he stared past me, lost in the imagery. Then he asked so quietly that I barely understood the words, “Where’s the lesson in odds?”

  “My brothers and I stood on the bridge, betting on whether he would live or not.” I looked in my rearview, then back at Gardner. “Odds were ten to one he’d survive.”

  Then, louder: “You killed him?”

  I stared out the window as the couple with the Pomeranian walked up their driveway. “He would have killed himself, Randy. All he had to do was get control of his mind and think about what he needed to do.” I turned to him. “This is an opportunity for you to do the same. Presence of mind, my friend. Think, and make the decisions that will save your life.”

  Randall faced forward and rubbed his face so hard it looked like he was kneading a massive ball of dough.

  As I put the car in gear and had us back on our path to the highway, I said, “As for our gambling friend, he beat the odds. He survived. He was underwater for over ninety seconds, but he eventually surfaced. We picked him up at the shoreline, threw him in the back of our car, and drove him home.”

  Randall began sniffling, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

  “Next time you think for even a split second that you can play us, Randall, I want you to imagine what was running through Chuck’s mind for those ninety seconds he was at the bottom of the Passaic.”

  Gardner sighed, stared at his lap, whispered, “I hate you freaking people.”

  It took significant restraint to avoid turning to him and sounding like a disgruntled child: I hate you, too! Guys like Gardner are the ones you toss into the Passaic tethered to an engine block instead of a cinder block. When he came to us in hysterics, at that time in debt by five figures, he made the mistake of thinking all crews in organized crime had interests in pornography; we did not, found no need to infringe on turf already so well covered. Gardner was desperate for money, and for something to make him worthy of our help, he offered boxes—boxes—of videos of he and his wife engaged in their bedroom activities that he had accumulated over a period of several years, all filmed via hidden cameras and high-tech equipment, all without his wife’s knowledge, filmed with his face away and hers to the camera. This is the way you must understand Gardner, as willing to give up any shred of dignity for his addiction.

  Here, Peter and I saw eye to eye. All four Bovaro brothers would have taken turns on him, would have kicked and smashed those demons into submission. But I saved Randall’s life, seeing him for what he was, as having one value that would provide more to our family than the release and rush of delivering his punishment: He would do anything to continue gambling. Even if it meant surrendering the pride and trust of his wife, turning her into an amateur porn star. Even if it meant exposing his own intimate moments to the world. Even if it meant his wife and children could be forced into a lifetime of embarrassment.

  Even if it meant potentially jeopardizing the entire Federal Witness Protection Program.

  As we arrived at his office building, I parked in a distant space; the lot was mostly empty on that Saturday night. We both emerged from my car at the same time.

  “Where you going?” Gardner asked.

  “With you.”

  “You crazy? You can’t get into the building, never mind the room where our systems are. I mean, c’mon, the place is loaded with cameras.”

  It just looked like any office building to me, a fifteen-story glass and concrete structure designed by an architect with little imagination, a small metal sign at the foot of the building marking it as property of the U.S. Department of Justice. Could have been a building full of filing cabinets for all I knew.

  He started walking toward the facility and said, “Gimme a half hour.”

  “To get an address?”

  He turned around, took a few paces back in my direction. “Look, I gotta run some diagnostic procedures on the servers, make it look like there’s a reason I’m badging in on a Saturday night.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Gardner held up a hand to signal he was abbreviating the conversation. “What do you know about Oracle?” My answer never arrived. And as he turned and walked away, he said, “Gimme a half hour.”

  I sat and waited patiently—for about twenty-eight of those thirty minutes. But when the half-hour mark came and went, I made the mistake of falling into paranoia the way I did in the convenience store in Kentucky. I imagined Gardner calling some contact in Justice, my car being surrounded by unmarked vehicles, guns aimed at me from too many positions to identify, red dots from lasers swirling in loose circles over my forehead and chest as I exited my car with my hands in the air. I could only hope that Gardner’s addiction to gambling was a ruling force, or better, that my lesson on presence of mind would be enough for him to make the right decision.

  At the forty-five-minute mark, I started my car, ready to abandon Randall at the facility along with the opportunity for being captured. A few minutes later, I had the car in motion and aimed for the exit when I saw Randall appear at the cluster of glass doors at the bottom of the building. I drove over to pick him up as though it had been my original intention.

  Randall jumped in the front seat and slammed the door, his face covered in sweat as though it was the first time he’d gotten us this particular information.

  “Go,” he said.

  “What did you find out?”

  “She’s been relocated. Just go.”

  I felt a rush of relief, from not only knowing she was still alive, but being on the cusp of getting her new location.

  As we left the lot and returned to the freeway, my mind started spinning a tale of what might have caused Justice to move her, jammed up on the obvious conclusion: I’d not been as careful as I thought while staking her out. I struggled with which questions to ask first.

  “How long ago?”

  “Little over five weeks.”

  It had been almost a year since I’d last seen Melody. I couldn’t imagine what would have prompted Justice to relocate her again just a month earlier. Unless someone else was trying to kill her.

  I raised my voice, hoped it might bring a more detailed answer. “Why’d you guys move her?”

  “Who knows.”

  “It didn’t say?”

  “You asked for an address.”

  Gardner would never serve as my partner in crime.

  “Gimme what you do have. Where is she?”

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, “once you’ve driven me home safe and sound.”

  I didn’t say another word, not because I was obeying Gardner’s demand—I could have gotten the answer out of him while still keeping one hand on the wheel—but because the flood of potential answers to the question why had me clawing for the surface to get some air. Just like Chuck.


  I replayed every conversation I’d had with my father and brothers over the previous few months, attempted to reread their words and signals and facial expressions. Their disappointment in my inability to complete the mission of knocking off Melody was not exactly hidden; maybe they thought it was time to get it done no matter what. On the other hand, there was really no compelling reason to have her killed immediately, other than to tidy up that loose end and to make a point to our peers that eventually we eliminate everyone who would dare to testify against us.

  We pulled in front of Randall’s house, his driveway now full of cars, guests visible through the first-floor windows.

  “Great,” he said, “everyone’s already here.”

  “Where is she?”

  Gardner stared at his house, had a look on his face like he was starting to wonder if this was all worth it. He never turned my way, mumbled, “Four twenty-five Sunrise Road, Farmington, New Mexico.”

  I closed my eyes and dropped my head back to the headrest, thought, Man, that’s a really, really long drive. All along I’d been fortunate enough to have Melody within a single day’s drive. But New Mexico meant overnight stops. I knew I could never utilize airplanes or trains or anything that would log my name to a ticket purchase, anything that could be used as proof I’d been traveling with the intent of locating her. And with the demands of Sylvia, I wasn’t really sure how I could ever pull it off; those trips would require a significant time commitment.

  Gardner turned and stared at me as I blanked out and gazed down the tree-lined street of his neighborhood. “You’re welcome.”

  I kept my eyes on the street. “Get out of my car, you friggin’ scumbag.”

  Once he’d left, I broke my trance, watched him stroll to his front stoop, running his hands through his hair, straightening out his clothes, wiping his face. He put his hand on the doorknob and paused a few seconds like he was trying to get his breath instead of his composure.