by Gina LaManna
I took a step back, not wanting to get in the way, while Meg watched with too much enjoyment.
“You’re just acting out because you know it’s true.” This time, Joey leaned forward quicker and pulled Vivian into a full blown French kiss. It was long and drawn out and disgusting, and to say Vivian kissed him back was an understatement.
Meg and I retreated from the front steps and shuffled towards the car, Meg towing her two dresses behind her, while the violent make out session continued behind us.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Vivian shouted after us after she broke away from Joey and gave him a shove off the front steps. “He’s not coming.”
“I’m so confused,” I muttered to Meg.
“They’re soul mates,” she murmured enviously.
I turned in her direction and gawked. She was swooning.
“I’ll be there baby, don’t you worry,” Joey winked and hopped into a Cadillac that spanned the entire front lawn. One he’d probably stolen to use for the day.
Meg fanned herself. “If you don’t take him, Viv, I just might.”
Vivian scowled at Meg. “Nobody gets Joey. And don’t call me Viv. You don’t know me.”
“It’s best we get to know each other fast, on account of I’m gonna be at your wedding, too.” Meg held up her two clothing options. “By the way, which dress do you think works best?”
I stepped in between the ladies. Or children, more like. “Look, Vivian, I came by to warn you that I think Joey’s going to try and crash your wedding.” I paused. “Also, do you know anything about his fight with Leo Campani last week?”
“Don’t you dare wear those sparkles.” Vivian ignored me and pointed a talon at Meg. “My dress has less sparkles than that masterpiece there, and I don’t want to be outshined at my own wedding.”
She turned that scary pointed finger in my direction. “What does everyone fight with Leo about?”
“Money, girls, cards, sports, general life things…” I started. “Yeah, I see your point.”
“Hard to imagine the Church allows him to marry people. Whoever gave him his priest license is insane, I mean…” All of the sudden her eyes turned to something happening behind me. “JESUS H. CHRIST, Joey! That’s my car!”
Joey had leapt from the Cadillac into a bubblegum pink Jeep.
“Now, there is a church going woman. You think she’s one of them sorts that gets tongues and shouts out random shit? ‘Cause it seems like it to me.” Meg tapped her lip and together we watched Vivian storm out into the street and put one stiletto heeled foot onto the front of a bright pink, Barbie-style jeep.
Her nude heel pressed dangerously against the front headlight.
“Don’t do that,” I said. “It’s your car, Vivian. He’s trying to provoke you.”
“It’s working,” she muttered. “Joey, you good for nothing turd, get out of the vehicle and I won’t have you murdered.”
“Damn, this is a classic Romeo and Juliet,” Meg said.
“No, it’s not. They committed suicide,” I said.
“Does it matter who killed who?” Meg rolled her eyes. “Death and love, man. Death and love.”
“You’re twisted.” I took two steps towards the road with my hands out, talking quietly to Vivian, saying anything I could to calm her down.
My words bounced off of her. With her hands on her hips and foot on the car, she looked like a stampeding bull ready to charge straight through the windshield. “It’s a good thing Leo died when he did, else I’d get married right this second to Donald.”
“Donald,” Joey spat through the open Jeep top. “Boring banker Donald. Is that what you want, Vivian?”
“Wait a second,” I charged right in front of the car. “What does Leo have to do with your marriage?”
Neither of the two feuding exes looked in my direction.
“MOVE, Lacey,” Joey instructed.
I didn’t move.
“Don’t move, Lacey,” Vivian said. “Stand beside your Family. He ain’t gonna run us over.”
I looked at Joey’s eyes and wasn’t quite sure that Vivian was correct in her thinking.
“Course I will,” Joey said. “What’s gonna happen? Carlos will kill me and then you and me will both be dead. Better both of us, huh? I’m not letting you marry that asstard.”
All three of our heads swiveled towards the sidewalk as Meg blew loudly into an overused handkerchief. She waved a hand and swiped her teary eyes.
“Don’t mind me,” she sobbed. “Continue on. Beautiful. Just beautiful. I only wish I had popcorn.”
Vivian raised her eyes at me.
“Ignore her, like she said.” I shrugged.
A squeal of wheels and a crunch of glass broke the silence, and I yanked Vivian to the sidewalk as we dove out of Joey’s way. He’d reversed and then bucked forward, the Jeep plowing into my Lumina with a sickening, gut-busting crash. It just missed the end of Vivian’s five inch stiletto.
“Oh man, that ain’t good,” Meg said. “That’s your car.”
I brushed myself off, a small pool of blood blossoming on my knee where some skin had been scratched off.
I picked up my phone from inside my pocket and pressed my first speed dial. My favorite cousin. “Can you pick us up, please?”
I rolled my eyes at the response on the other end of the line. “Yes, Meg’s here and she’s fine.”
A dial tone met my ear. I spoke, regardless. “Don’t worry, I’m fine, too.”
“How does he know where to find us?” Meg asked.
“Clay? He has tracking devices stuffed in places you’d never want to know about.”
A shrill shriek met my ear and I took a perch on the curb. Through the smoke and the wreckage of the pink Barbie car and my trusty Lumina, I watched Vivian kick off her heels and chase Joey on foot down the street and into the graveyard. It looked like a blonde cabbage patch doll chasing an Ooompah Loompah.
“Should we go help them?” Meg asked.
“Nah, they’ll figure it out.”
Meg joined me on the stoop as we waited for Clay.
“So in regards to the dress,” Meg started with a satisfied smile. “I’m thinking the sparkles.”
** **
Clay arrived in his creepo white van minutes later and ushered us inside with one look at the burning mess.
He hopped down from the driver’s seat and took a long walk around the outside of the wreckage. “You know, I think the Lumina’s fine.”
“What? Do you see this burning part here? In what world are flames coming from a car described as fine?” I gestured towards the shards of pink sticking up in every direction from my silver car. It looked like a disgruntled child crumpled their toy and set it on fire, just in a larger version. Which was kind of true.
“I think it’s just the Jeep that capsized. Give me your keys,” Clay held his hand out.
“What a hero,” Meg blinked, remnants of her former tears dripping from her eyes again.
Clay looked down and held his breath.
“Here,” I handed over the key ring.
Sure enough, minutes later the Lumina backed out from the mess with hardly a scratch on it. A few ashes blew away in the breeze as Clay took it for a test run around the block. The pink mess collapsed a few feet further, the crushing metal sounds colliding with angry shouts from Vivian and Joey in the graveyard two blocks down.
“Good as new,” Clay said. “What the heck is this thing reinforced with?”
“Damn,” I said. “I was hoping it’d clunk out on me.”
“No such luck,” Clay said. “It’s fine to drive. But I should probably take Meg in my car, just in case something happens.”
“Wait, what about me? Don’t you care if something happens to me?” I hollered. However, Clay’s car was already disappearing from view around the corner. Meanwhile, a car pulled up in the driveway around back, and I could only assume it was Vivian’s banker fiancé. Someone whom I eventually wanted to meet, but not under
the current circumstances.
So with no other options, I climbed in the car, headed to 7-11 for a sugar bomb to calm my nerves, and drove on home.
** **
Somehow, I beat Clay and Meg home, and the absence of the creeper van provided plenty of space for a primo parking spot for the Lumina.
I let myself into the apartment cautiously. “Alfonso?”
There was no answer.
“Alfonso, are you hungry? Sorry, we got a little delayed on our, uh, quest this morning.”
The place was suspiciously quiet. I picked my way through the kitchen, noticing nothing different than when I’d left that morning. I listened for sounds of meowing or human noises from the bathroom, but there was nothing except for the clanking of the dump trunk outside the apartment.
Dang it, the garbage was right outside the bathroom window.
I took a few steps down the hall. The only time the garbage truck was ever that loud was days when Clay took a novel into the bathroom with him, burned through a few candles and opened the window. If the noises were filtering through the apartment this clearly, the only explanation was an open window.
And the window hadn’t been open when I’d left.
I unlocked the door from the outside, but something was blocking my entrance. I pushed hard once, twice, three times, but the flimsy wooden door didn’t budge.
“Alfonso, if you’re in there, open up ‘cause I’m about to bust the door down,” I called.
I was bluffing, but how could he know? I used handicapped buttons to open doors at the gym.
“I’m coming in! Coming atcha, Alfonso.” I backed way up against the other side of the hallway. Maybe I’d run towards the door and give it a little shoulder shove and a thunk for good measure in order to really scare him, on the off chance he was still inside. If he’d escaped like I suspected, then I’d wait for Clay to come home and work his magic on the locks.
I took a walking start, sped up to a jog and crashed into the door, my shoulder situated accordingly.
However that flimsy door proved even less sturdy than I remembered, and my shoulder didn’t stop on impact like I’d planned. Instead, my shoulder, head, and the rest of my body hurtled right through the wooden frame. The door splintered into hundreds of shards, with one single chunk intact containing a perfect hole where my shoulder had hit. Splinters sprayed all over the bathroom—the floor was covered, the bathtub had a coat and even the toilet bowl looked like a wood chuck had taken a dump.
“Crap.” I stood up and peered through the window, rubbing my shoulder, even though it wasn’t really sore. It fact, it felt like I’d run through a piece of paper, the door had been so thin. For the first time I noticed that it was my own kitchen chair that had been propped under the door knob, preventing me from entering.
Outside the window, the garbage truck moved on, and I pondered how the boy had climbed through and gotten out. It was a long fall, and the landing wasn’t exactly soft. In fact, it was either a metal dumpster or cement.
The front door opened and in walked Clay.
“Dropped Meg off,” he called from the living room. “You should pack, we’re leaving tonight for the wedding. Vivian just called us all to tell us they pushed it up a day.”
“Great,” I muttered. “Just perfect.”
“What happened here?” Clay rounded the corner and stared at the wreckage.
“We have an escapee,” I said.
Clay grunted. “Your hair is full of woodchips.”
“Thanks,” I said. “So is everything else. I’m trying to figure out how the turd got down.”
I climbed onto the bathtub once more and peeked over. “Nothing’s missing from here. He can’t have jumped, not if the lid of the dumpster wasn’t open. And it wasn’t when I left.”
When I turned around looking for an opinion, Clay was gone.
“Hey,” I yelled. “I was talking to you.”
Clay returned a moment later, an almost amused glint in his eyes. “How’d that chair get in there?”
“This?” I pointed at the kitchen chair. “I dunno, I guess he dragged it in here, but I can’t figure out why except to keep me out—”
“Oh, shit.” I stared straight at Clay, my back ramrod straight.
Clay let out a guffaw. “The kid’s messing with you. He balanced the chair under the knob, slunk out through a small crack in the opening, and shut the bathroom door slowly, so it’d prop against the handle. Then he walked out the front door.”
I rolled my eyes and put my head between my hands. “This business is so difficult when everyone’s smarter than me.”
Clay sat down next to me and put a beefy arm around my shoulders. One of Clay’s many skills was giving really fantastic hugs.
“It’s okay.” He tapped my chin. “You’re smarter than Joey.”
I rolled my eyes. “Gee, thanks.”
He smiled. “I’m kidding. You do a good job. Just, from now on, please stop destroying everything. Do you need me to put Anthony on you as a body guard again? To protect you from yourself, maybe?”
“Nope—not necessary,” I quipped, probably way too quickly.
My overzealous answer didn’t squeeze past Clay unnoticed. “That’s what I thought.”
He winked and helped me up. “It’s either that, or I’m going to start charging you extra for rent for all the repairs.”
I heaved myself up with his help.
After a quick reassuring hug, he pointed towards my room. “Go. Pack. We leave in three hours to drive up north.”
“All right,” I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Head to the boonies with a bunch of loonies. Sounds fun. But what do we do about the kid?”
“Leave him be, for now.”
“But he admitted to murdering his own Uncle. I don’t feel safe with escaped killers running around town. Plus, he should pay for what he did wrong.”
Clay fixed me with a blank stare. “Lacey, you work for the Mafia. Your last task was to recover fifteen million dollars of stolen goods. When did you start caring about stuff like ethics?”
“Well, this is just wrong.” I stamped my foot. “We don’t do stuff that hurts people.”
Clay walked away into his room. I could see his eyes roll through the back of his head.
He turned back to face me. “We’ll find him when we come back. But if you don’t get your butt ready to go to that wedding, you won’t be around to find anyone.”
I stared at the ceiling and wondered for the umpteenth time why I’d ever decided to work for the mafia.
Then, I remembered. Money. Family. The only two things that matter… right?
Chapter 5
Four hours later, we were on the road and heading north. Clay, Meg, Joey and I made for one cozy car ride, with an impressive lack of coordination for bathroom breaks. The wedding was in Lutsen, a three-ish hour drive from the cities, made slower by frequent snack breaks. We’d barely get on the road after getting gas before someone needed a beef jerky, or somebody else needed to whiz, or yet somebody else needed a nip from the flask in the trunk.
After forty-five minutes of stopping every ten minutes, Clay locked the doors of the Lumina and sped undeterred up the Interstate. Meg sat in the front seat next to him, and Joey and I squished into the back. Clay refused to drive even one mile per hour over the speed limit, so after an hour of driving, we’d waved at Carlos’s motorcade as it flew past us, then a series of other Family members, and finally Vivian’s newly-rented pink Jeep. It was then we caught the very first, fleeting glimpse of her fiancé. He looked utterly unremarkable, as expected.
As every single guest invited to the wedding whizzed right on past us, the only consistent things about the drive were Joey’s orange sheen, Clay’s speed (seventy miles per hour, exactly) and the sleek black car behind us.
“Why is he on my ass?” Clay asked. “I’m getting upset. Why doesn’t he pass us?”
“Why don’t you try speeding up?” I coaxed. “Then maybe he’ll drop back.
”
“Not a chance. The Lumina starts shuddering at seventy-two miles an hour.”
“Then why did we drive it?” Joey asked from my side.
I glared at him. “Because it’s indestructible, as you proved. And you’re only here because I need money to buy an upgraded vehicle. Thanks for that, by the way.” Then I turned my glare to my cousin. “Clay, why did we take this damn car?”
“Shit’s bound to hit the fan up there, and I’m not letting my baby near that,” Clay said. He caught Meg’s curious glance in the mirror, and quickly corrected himself. “My baby car.”
I smirked and turned around to glance at our tail.
I groaned.
“What is it?” Joey asked.
I pulled out my phone and dialed. “Why are you following us?”
Anthony’s smooth voice floated through the speaker and made me wish I was riding along next to him, for more reasons than one. “Just protecting you, doll.”
“From what? Or who?” I asked.
“You are driving with a psychopath who destroyed your car,” Anthony said.
“Right. Three of them, actually.” I glanced around the interior of the car. Meg was wolfing down beef jerky as if it had been made from the last cow on earth, Joey was applying spray tanning lotion that smelled like pee, and Clay refused to remove his hands from the steering wheel long enough to take a sip of water.
“Arguably four,” Anthony said.
“Hardy har,” I said. “I’m laughing over here. Anyway, this is painful. You don’t have to drive this slowly, we’ll be fine.”
“I’ve heard that before.” Anthony let out a long sigh. “But tell Clay if he slows down even the slightest hair I will ram him so hard he’ll hit Lutsen in three seconds flat.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Ciao.” He clicked off the line.
“It’s just Anthony driving behind us. He says if you don’t speed up at least five miles per hour, he’s going to ram your ass all the way to Lutsen.” I slipped my phone back into my handbag.
“What?” I looked up at three faces all staring horrified at me, Clay’s eyes twitching in the mirror like a rabbit.
