by Tim Green
“You’re a liar,” I say, the words coming out before I can think about them. I stand.
She looks down, quiet for a moment. Then, without looking up, she says, “You’ve seen him. His eyes.”
“He’s not mine,” I say. “If he was, you stole him. He belongs to you now, you and your husband.
“Chuck, call an ambulance,” I say, then turn to go.
Lexis doesn’t speak but I hear a wail as I put my hand on the door.
I stop.
“You loved me,” she says.
I turn and glare at her. “I did.”
“This mess,” she says. Shaking her head, she drops off the edge of the bed and onto her knees. “It’s all a mist. All these years. It can change. I’m begging you. He’s your son.”
I drop my head and close my eyes. I take a deep breath, fighting back a tide of emotions.
Suddenly Chuck steps forward.
“Frank said something to Allen about getting his money from Mickey and meeting him at the Rockefeller Outlook,” he says. “It’s a rest area on the Palisades Parkway, just north of the George Washington Bridge.
“Give me your gun,” I say to Chuck.
I feel the heft of his HK self-loading.45 and close my fingers around it. Without looking back, I turn and go.
68
ON OUR WAY UP the Hudson Parkway, I call Ramo Capozza and tell him I think I’ve got a package for him. I ask him to have a couple guys meet me at the outlook. We cross the GW and head north on the Palisades. A few miles up, Bert points at the blue-and-white sign glowing in our headlights. The Rockefeller Outlook. There are no headlights in my rearview mirror. Ahead a pair of taillights disappear around a bend. I slow and pull off the parkway.
Under a row of streetlights, faded yellow diagonal lines mark two dozen parking spots along the river’s side of the narrow parking area. It’s empty except for a dark green Excursion and a small Mercedes sedan. Nothing moves. Beyond them is a line of trees, ghostlike in the glow of light. I turn off my headlights and coast to a stop behind the Excursion. Small stones and grit crunch under the tires, and I hold my finger to my lips signaling Bert to be quiet.
We slip out of the black G55 and stand together surveying the area. The trees that line the sharp edge of the Palisades are broken by a sidewalk lined with lollipop telescopes where you can see the sights of the Hudson up close for fifty cents. Beyond the walk is a jagged line of black rocks separating the outlook from the plunging drop that leads to the river hundreds of feet below. On the far side of the Hudson, the distant lights from the Bronx twinkle around the mouth of the Harlem River.
But there is no sign of Frank.
I lean close to Bert and in a whisper say, “Stay here. I’ll take a look.”
“I should go too,” Bert says in a low rumble.
“No,” I say. “If they come back, don’t let them get away. Be careful.”
I leave Bert in the shadow of the Excursion. Crouching low, I hurry up onto the sidewalk. Now I can see the city to the south.
I hear nothing except the rustle of leaves in the breeze until the horn of a freighter moving upriver sounds from deep below. There is a sign I see now planted between the big toothy rocks. DO NOT CLIMB ON THE BLUFF. As I move closer to the edge of the darkness, a light flashes at the same time a pop sounds from below. They are swallowed almost instantly by the darkness, and for a moment I wonder if I imagined it. Then I hear a shriek, and voices.
Frank.
Nothing mattered to Frank anymore but his boy and the money. When he saw Mickey’s car resting under the lights, his face stretched taut with a grin. Things were working so well that the pain in his leg and hand and neck seemed distant, unimportant. He pulled up the truck alongside the small Mercedes and looked around only briefly before climbing out.
Allen got out too. Frank turned to tell him to stay, but the throb in the meat of his leg and the sharp stabbing pain in his hand made him think again. A car whooshed past on the parkway, its taillights a blur.
“Come on,” Frank said, and limped toward the darkness.
He stepped up onto the curb, kicking a pinecone and crushing some broken glass. The loose edge of a garbage bag snapped against its metal can. Frank sniffed again. No sign of Mickey. The cut in his neck began to burn. Then he heard his name being called and the smell of a cigarette floated up and swirled away.
The muted sound came again from the blackness beyond the outlook’s lip and was quickly swept away on the breeze. Frank steadied himself against a metal telescope and slid the Glock out from under his arm before creeping toward the edge. When he got to the rock barrier he eased down onto the rough cool stone and leaned over into the dark, looking and aiming at the same time.
The dim figure of a man with the ember of a cigarette glowing in his mouth waved his arms.
“Frank,” he said. “Down here.”
It was Mickey, his rat face lit by the sudden orange flare of the cigarette.
Frank sat down on the top of one of the big rocks and swung his legs over the side. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that a steep grassy bank descended about twelve feet to another outcropping of flat rock. Beyond that was a darkness deeper yet. Even from where he was, Frank could feel the void and it chilled his spine.
“Come on,” he said to Allen, and struggled down to the outcrop below, letting his bottom slide along, matting the grass for the last four feet.
Allen’s feet struck the rock and he bent over to help. Frank stood breathing hard, wincing from the pain. Mickey was grinning at them in the dim glow from the big city ten miles away. He stood on the very edge between two enormous duffel bags, the canvas kind used for carrying hockey equipment. In front of Mickey was a small suitcase.
Mickey pitched his butt over the edge, opened his arms, and said, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Frank. But this is a lot of money and it’ll take you a few minutes to get it back up that hill. Time for me to get my little Sioux City girl and get going. Nothing personal. Just the way you taught me.”
“Where’s the passports?” Frank asked, hobbling slowly toward the edge.
Mickey smiled and said, “You’ll get those when I get up on that ledge and you’re down here.”
“But you’ve got them?” Frank said, his voice rising to expose the panic he was beginning to feel.
“Sure I do,” Mickey said. He picked up the suitcase and started to circle away from the edge.
Frank raised the Glock and shot him in the knee.
Mickey dropped and writhed on the rock ledge, mewling. Frank closed the gap, reached into Mickey’s coat, and came up with a sleek new Smith amp; Wesson Model 66. He held it out to Allen.
“You might need this.”
Allen looked at him blankly.
“Take it!” Frank shouted.
“Dad, Jesus,” Allen said, shaking his head and grabbing a handful of his own hair.
Frank frowned at his son, the silence and the stupid expression on his face.
“Be a man, goddamn it,” Frank said. “You’re my son, now act like it.”
“I don’t want that,” he said, pushing away the gun, his eyes fixed on Mickey.
“You will if you need it,” Frank said, opening his hand and slapping it in there. “You think you just get a Platinum Card and a Land Cruiser on your sixteenth birthday? You gotta do things to get that stuff.”
Frank bent back down. He dug deeper into Mickey’s coat and came up with a thick brown envelope. Mickey continued to whimper.
“Shut up,” Frank snarled.
He tore open the envelope to examine the papers in the dim light. Passports with his and Lexis’s and Allen’s pictures in them along with phony birth certificates, credit cards, driver’s licenses, and Social Security cards. The whole package had cost him a hundred thousand dollars, but the names and the Social Security numbers were real, so they could get through any airport or customs agent in the world without raising an alarm. The ones for Lexis he slipped back into the envelope and to
ssed over the edge of the bluff.
By daybreak, Capozza’s men would be hunting for him with everything they had, but he and Allen would be long gone.
“What do you think about seventy million dollars?” he said, looking from the bags to his son. “You think we can get by on that? Huh?”
Allen looked at him blankly.
“Dad,” he said, “are you kidding?”
Frank pulled his collar away from his neck, exposing a thin red line of flesh.
“Is this a joke?” he said.
“Jesus, Dad,” Allen said, stepping away from him.
Frank stuck his Glock in Mickey’s face. The smaller man winced and started scrabbling away.
“Get over there,” Frank said, wagging his gun toward the bags, prodding Mickey with the barrel.
“Frank,” Mickey said in a whine, clutching his mangled knee, “what are you gonna do?”
Mickey was cowering there at the lip. Frank raised the gun as if to strike. When Mickey turned his face away, Frank put the bottom of his shoe against the accountant’s rump and shoved. Mickey screamed and flailed, his arms grasping air. He hung for a moment in the empty space, then disappeared into the darkness with a fading howl.
“Jesus,” Allen said, his voice breaking, his eyes leaking tears. He stood there, arms by his sides with the wind whipping at his dark hair. One fist was clenched. In the other hand, he held the Model 66 by the barrel. Frank felt his face grow hot.
“Take one of these,” he said. He put his Glock into its shoulder holster, hoisted one of the big heavy bags, and lifted the small suitcase of Mickey’s money with his hurt hand.
“Take it!” Frank yelled, limping toward the bank with his hands full.
Allen nodded, but didn’t move.
Frank sensed something coming at him from above, but he had no time to think and react. He heard a cry and felt the jolt. Everything went black and he fell backward, dropping the money and splitting the back of his scalp open on the stone.
69
THE SOUND OF FRANK’S raised voice makes my heart beat faster and my shoulders tense. I dart down behind one of the rocks with the.45 raised and listen.
I hear Frank shout again over the wind. The murmur of Allen’s response. A growl and the whining stops. I ease into the space between two of the rocks and look down.
Frank looking at papers. Allen with a gun. Frank tosses an envelope away, then prods the man he shot toward the edge. When he kicks him over, my gut twists, but I hold tight. He’s still got that gun and I’ll be an easy target if I show myself with the glow of the rest area lights behind me.
Allen is crying, and then Frank’s greed takes over. Instead of leaving one of the bags and keeping the gun in his hand, he holsters it, picks up one bag and the suitcase, and heads snarling toward the grassy slope.
I could kill him now, but that wouldn’t do. Not after all I’ve been through. Capozza’s men-the thing that really terrifies Frank-are on their way. He needs to suffer. I stick the.45 into the waist of my pants. When he’s close, I jump up onto the rock I’m hiding behind and launch myself down on top of him. In midair, I am illuminated by headlight beams that swing over the top of me from behind.
I strike him and roll to the side, rising to my feet and drawing my gun.
Frank crabs his fat frame backward toward the ledge, leaving the money behind. The lights from whatever car has just arrived stream over the top of us, broad blue beams that stab into the darkness above the pitchy river.
“Stop!” I yell.
Allen stands off to the side, between us. He has a revolver in his hands, pointed my way now, wagging it back and forth. My gun is aimed steady at Frank’s head. His shoulders heave up and down from the effort to breathe. His hands go in the air and he gets up on one knee. He glares at me, blinking, those empty blue eyes piercing beneath the eaves of his heavy brow.
“Seth,” he says, the name slipping from his bared teeth. “Where’s Raymond?”
“You’re looking at him,” I say with a tight smile.
Frank looks at Allen and screams, “Shoot him!”
My eyes never waver from the snake.
“Allen,” I say, “I came to take you back to your mother.”
“Do what I say!” Frank screams. His face is red and flecks of white spittle fly from his small chubby lips.
“He’s not your father, Allen,” I say slowly, relishing the shade of purple that blooms in Frank’s face. “That’s why you’re nothing like him. You’re my son.”
“You fucking liar,” Frank snarls. “I’ll kill you…”
He starts to lower his hands. I shake the gun at him.
“Move, Frank, and you’ll die right now.”
“Kill him!” Frank shouts at Allen. “Pull the fucking trigger!”
“Genetics, Allen,” I say. “You took biology. Two blue-eyed parents can only have blue-eyed kids. You have brown eyes… like mine.”
I hear Bert call my name from behind. That low rumble. His giant shadow confuses the headlight beams. I see Allen spin and the flash of his gun. The shadow disappears and Bert cries out.
My eyes flicker. Frank dives. Allen goes down with him. My gun follows Frank, but I can’t pull the trigger. His head is behind Allen’s.
I see the glint of metal. Long and thin. From his sleeve, Frank has drawn a blade that now rests against Allen’s throat. A fishing fillet knife. Like the one used to frame me in another lifetime.
“If he’s yours, then you don’t want me slittin’ his throat,” Frank says in a growl. He raises himself up behind Allen, pulling him up too, using him as a shield.
Allen’s eyes are wide. He gropes for his neck.
The knife licks his skin and his limbs freeze.
I see those deep brown eyes. I see myself.
“Seth,” he says, begging me.
“See?” Frank says, sneering from behind Allen’s dark head of hair.
“He’s mine, Frank,” I say. “The whole game is mine. They’ll find you.”
“They’ll find you dead first,” Frank snarls. “Put the fucking gun down, or they’ll find him too.”
My hand lowers and my fingers go loose. The.45 clatters to the rock floor.
“Get down,” Frank says. “Put your hands on your head. Now! Him or you.”
I feel the energy drain quickly from my body. I kneel and lace my fingers over the top of my head, but I’m watching.
“Good,” Frank says. He pushes Allen aside and draws his Glock.
He limps over to me and touches the pistol to my forehead. I can hear his ragged breath. I can smell his cologne and garlic wrapped in mint. He moves behind me where I can’t see him, dragging the metal barrel across my scalp and up over my fingers until it comes to rest in the soft tissue beneath the back of my skull.
Allen’s face is white, his hair a tangle from the wind. Behind him the big city blazes, floating.
“I’m gonna do what that jury shoulda done,” Frank says in a husky whisper. “The death sentence.”
I close my eyes and the gunshot explodes in my ears.
Frank crashes down on top of me and I see a burst of lights. When he rolls off, I am covered in blood.
Helena is standing in the beams of the headlights, her shadow like a dark angel, hair pulled back, faded jeans, the smoking three-inch Chief’s Special in her hands. She crouches, hops over the edge of the rocks, and slides down the grassy bank with her gun raised.
I pull my legs out from under Frank’s bulk and step back. Allen is on his knees, shaking, his head in his hands. Frank’s gut protrudes up out of his dirty jacket, stretching the buttons of the white shirt that is now crimson with blood on the left side. His chest heaves up and down and as he wheezes blood foams at his lips. His eyes are wide with fear and he stares up at Helena. His fingers twitch and claw around the rocky ledge in search of his gun.
Helena’s eyes are glassy and narrowed, and when I call her name, she doesn’t react. The Chief’s Special is trembling, but well ai
med at Frank’s face.
“Helena!” I shout. “Don’t.”
“Do you remember me?” she says to Frank.
She drops the gun from his face to his crotch and fires three quick 9mm rounds.
The only thing I can hear through the hot smell of powder and the smoke and the ringing in my ears is the symphony of Frank’s piercing screams.
Another car shrieks to a stop above us and I hear the slamming of doors. Capozza’s men are soon beside me with their guns drawn. They grin like jackals as they haul Frank up the hillside by his ankles. His agony is mixed with fear now. Sobs punctuate his shrill moaning as his head bumps along the stony ground.
Allen’s face is blank. I tell him to come on. I take Helena’s hand and tug her up the hill. Bert is dusting himself off, bleeding from a nick in the upper arm from Allen’s gun. Under the glow of the streetlights I can see Frank twisting and hysterical in the trunk of an old Lincoln Town Car. Capozza’s men slam it shut and go back over the edge for the money. They heave the heavy duffel bags into the backseat and then climb into the front. The doors slam.
Inside the trunk, Frank’s muffled squealing pitches even higher. The car’s gears clank. The tires yip. Off they go.
EPILOGUE
ON THE FRONT STEPS of my Fifth Avenue mansion I stop to inhale the smell of fallen leaves. Orange, yellow, and red light up the treetops in the park. It’s cloudy in the city, but the TV says the weather upstate is beautiful. My limousine takes me to Teterboro airport. When I climb on board my plane, Bert is sitting there in the main cabin, grinning up at me.
“Hey,” I say. “When did you get back?”
“This morning,” he says. “You gotta go next time. Here, look at this.”
He hands me a small cardboard folder with a photo inside. Bert taking up a two-person seat on a giant log ride, plummeting, hands in the air, mouth wide in a happy scream.
“Splash Mountain,” he says.
I give him a smile, hand his photo back, and sit down in the leather seat across the aisle. I recline my seat, close my eyes, and say, “Syracuse plays Louisville today. Allen’s starting at quarterback. You coming with me?”
