Chapter Ten
Cody Laurel
Cody Laurel sniffed the air and winced. Even with his eyes closed, he could tell that he wasn’t at home. If the sounds of two people arguing hadn’t told him he wasn’t in his room, the rancid body odor and the stench of stale booze would have made it clear.
He opened his eyes and looked around. Yep. Not home. Looked like a jail cell. He wanted to panic but forced the fear back down. He knew that showing fear was the best way around to get all the wrong attention. That’s the kind of stuff you learn when you’re the class loser.
Still, the man lying next to him on the narrow cot was enough to get him moving. The old dude looked like he was asleep, but he was also trying to spoon with Cody. “Ugh.” He rolled away from the mattress and shivered in the cold air.
There were five other men in the same cell, and all of them were asleep, a few of them snoring loud enough to wake the dead.
Cody pulled at the pants around his waist. They were way, way too big and even the belt that held them up wasn’t helping him any.
He didn’t have any shoes, just socks. He didn’t have a shirt either.
Not far away, he could see a couple of police officers struggling with a man who didn’t want to get locked up. The cops were winning.
When they were done locking the door to the cell a few feet down the way, Cody called out to them. “Excuse me? Excuse me!” His voice broke, the already high tone jumping even higher for a second. Puberty sucked. “Help, please!”
The man who came over to see him had steely gray hair in a crew cut over a face that was sagging. Cody guessed he was on the other side of fifty.
“Kid? What the hell are you doing in that cell?” The voice was rough and deep and fit the face perfectly.
“I was kind of hoping you could tell me that.” His heart was pumping along at way too high a speed and his knees wanted to shake themselves off.
Ten minutes later he was sitting in an interrogation room and sipping a hot cocoa from a coin-operated coffee machine. The hot chocolate was weak and watery and he savored every scalding drop of it.
His parents were on the way. He knew that only because Sergeant Tooley, the man who’d found him in the cell, had been nice enough to tell him. Tooley also demanded to know what he’d done with the other man in the cell, but Cody had no answer for that. He was still trying to work out why he was in jail and not the morgue.
The last thing he remembered clearly was running for dear life from Hank Chadbourn and Glenn Wagner. The two had been after him at the football game, ready to pound his head into the concrete for reporting them to Principal Corcoran. He’d known he was going to get a stomping if they found out. He’d been discreet and he couldn’t think of anyone who’d been in the office when he reported them.
So when Jeremy and Will convinced him to go to the pep rally, he thought everything was just fine. Besides, it was a chance to see Melanie Chambers in her cheerleading outfit. Hell, seeing her endless legs alone was enough to risk a beating. Add in the shape of her butt and he was willing to face a pack of lions.
The pep rally was less annoying than he’d expected and Melanie did a couple of splits that fired up his imagination, and when he went to the game afterward, he never had an idea he was in trouble.
He caught on around the same time Chadbourn hit him on the shoulder. The ape walked up with a scowl on his ugly face and slammed his fist into Cody’s shoulder hard enough to rock him in his seat and to leave a bruise. Cody was still trying to recover when Wagner said, “You’re a dead man.”
Wagner had been standing next to Hank, and both of them had smirks on their butt-ugly faces that said they were going to enjoy stretching his entrails around a few trees before they got serious about hurting him.
He got up and hauled his ass as fast as he could because no way in hell did he want to get his face rearranged. That didn’t seem to matter to Chadbourn and Wagner. The two were rednecks in training and seemed to really want to start their criminal record as soon as possible. The only thing going for him was dry air that stopped his asthma from acting up too much.
He ran and they followed, calling after him and demanding that he stop, like there was any way he was going to make it easy for them to break every bone in his body.
He’d just cut around the corner of the access road to the football field and could hear their heavy footsteps catching up fast and he’d known-absolutely known-that he was about to die when WAKE UP!
– there had been a loud noise and after that, the only thing he remembered was waking up in the jail cell with a drunk trying to use him as a teddy bear.
The door to the interrogation room opened and Cody saw his parents heading in his direction. He felt both a thrill of excitement at seeing them and a chill of fear at the looks on their faces.
His father was a big man, six feet tall and round, growing an intimidating beer gut to match his broad shoulders. He was normally cheerful, but the scowl on his face told Cody it wasn’t going to be a good day. His mom was slender and pretty, dark hair, dark eyes and an olive complexion that made her look younger than her years. Half of his friends had made clear that they thought she was hot, and he could understand that even if it was a little freaky. He got his complexion and hair color from her. Unfortunately he also got his build from her, which was to say he was skinny. It worked better on her. Much better. Mom’s eyes were puffy from crying, which explained the expression on his dad’s face. The best way in the world to make his father angry was to make his mother cry.
He flipped his bangs back from his face.
“Mom. Dad. Hi.” Despite himself, he let the relief win over the nervous edge. It was good to see them, even if he figured he was about to be grounded for a year or two. He couldn’t remember doing anything wrong, but he knew there was no way he was going to get out of this without some sort of punishment.
Linda Laurel looked at her son and started crying again. He was her baby and he knew it. She spoiled him rotten and here he was making her cry. Guilt cut through him like a knife.
“Mom, I’m sorry. I don’t even know how I got here.” His mom threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly enough to make his ribs creak. His father looked at him and the face he’d known for as long as he could remember softened for a moment. Neither of his folks was exactly strict, but he’d never given them a reason to be. The stony expression crept back over his father’s face and Cody swallowed.
“Cody, where the hell have you been?”
“Dad, I don’t know. The last thing I remember was being at the game and-”
The broad face that he normally saw smiling or cheering at a football game darkened and his dad fairly snarled. “That was four days ago, Cody! We’ve been worried sick!” His father stepped in closer and Cody half expected the man to hit him.
“Four days?!?” Frost crawled through his veins at the idea. Four days? What the hell happened to me?
His mother’s voice broke. “We thought you were dead, baby. Oh Lord, we thought you were dead!” She sobbed against him and held him even tighter. His dad moved from one foot to the other, his big hands balling up into fists and loosening again and again.
“Son, we’re going to have a long talk about this.”
“Dad, I don’t know what happened! Honest! I don’t know!” He felt the panic coming on now, a cold fear that made what he’d felt when the goon platoon was after him feel like the calm before a bad storm.
Four days? He closed his eyes and took comfort from his mom’s arms around him, even from her tears on his shoulder and the feel of her breathy sobs.
He couldn’t think anymore. Four days had disappeared from his life and he had no idea how to handle it. Cody had lived a sheltered life, never wanting for anything and always aware of how much his parents loved him. Nothing he’d ever experienced had prepared him for the idea of disappearing for over half of a week.
His dad led them both from the room. There’d be arguments later. He’d ha
ve to explain whatever he’d done to end up in a jail cell. But right now, it was all he could do just to move. Panic was sinking jagged teeth into his body and shaking him like a dog working over a favorite chew toy.
It was a new experience for him and he hated every second of it. All he’d ever wanted was to feel safe, so he basked in the feel of his mother and father protecting him.
It would be the last time he felt safe for a long, long while.
Chapter Eleven
Gene Rothstein
“Your parents are going to have a fit.” Uncle Robbie’s words were slurred, but not enough for Gene to worry about anything. Robert Stein was a family friend. He’d been the best man when Gene’s parents got married and he was Gene’s godfather, which was one more reason Gene prayed nothing ever happened to his family. The last thing he needed was to be raised by a man who bordered on being an alcoholic.
Not that he could say that. His dad would go through the roof if he ever thought about saying something like that in public.
“You hear what I said?” Rob was talking again. He looked away from the road ahead of them and his eyes sort of swam from side to side in his head. Oh yeah, this was going to be a fun trip. Gene double-checked to make sure he’d fastened his seat belt.
Gene had called Robbie when he couldn’t get hold of his mom or his dad, except for their answering services. Mom was probably due in court and Dad, well, Dad had his medical practice to take care of and that had to come first. It was the emergency room, after all. He was in charge of the whole department, so he couldn’t exactly skip off to find his son some forty miles from home on a school day.
That left “Uncle” Rob, the closest thing his family had to a drunk embarrassment, at least as far as Gene was concerned. He had to curb his dislike of the man. They’d been close once, before Gene realized that the man liked whiskey too much. That was back when Rob cracked jokes and told the greatest stories. Something had happened a while ago, though, that changed the way the man felt about Gene. Not about the rest of the kids, but he could feel it, the way that man avoided looking at him when he’d had too much to drink.
“Yes, sir. I hear you.” What else could he say? Of course his parents were going to have fits. He was having fits. He still didn’t know how he’d gotten to Brooklyn or where his clothes were or anything. He’d had to beg the lady at the muffler shop to let him use the phone and she’d acted like he was taking food from the mouths of her babies the whole time.
He bit everything back, of course, because that was what he did. If he was worried or scared or angry, he took after the examples his mother had presented and held it all in check. Bottle it up, let it out when you are on your own and no one has to deal with your problems but you. That was the way he had been raised and it worked just fine in his book.
At least Rob hadn’t started his favorite rant, the one about how “You know what the problem here is? You don’t know how good you’ve got it. That’s what the problem is.” Rob’s voice grew louder, like Gene had set out to ruin his otherwise perfect day and now he was going to yell and scream until he could no longer keep his audience captive.
Perfect, he thought. Just what I need. Another sermon from Revrund Robbie. There was a rhythm to Rob’s words, like a dance. Once you learned it, you could slide through his sermons and come out of them with only half your mind melted.
He tried to work it out again. In bed, sleeping, and the next thing he knew in an alley watching a big freaking rat chow down on breakfast. Somewhere between the two memories he’d either been abducted by aliens-not even remotely likely-or he’d been kidnapped-almost as crazy-or he’d been sleepwalking. Hell, maybe he’d accidentally knocked back a few of Uncle Rob’s gin and tonics when he wasn’t looking.
“And that’s the part you don’t get, Gene.” He was brought back to the present by the use of his name. Normally when Robbie called on a person by name, he was rounding up for the final pitch and ready to win the game. “You might think this is all just fun and games and that you don’t owe your parents anything, but where would you be if they hadn’t adopted you? You’d probably be living in some dive near where you called me from, that’s where.”
His stomach froze solid. His ears rang with a high, clear note, and all the spit in Gene’s mouth vanished.
What? What did he say about adopted?
“Wait, what? Adopted?” His normally calm surface broke and his voice cracked harshly as he looked toward Robbie.
Robbie weaved the car wildly across a lane of traffic and just managed not to kill them both as he stared at Gene, his eyes going wide. In that second Gene understood the truth. The man had opened his mouth too far and spit out a secret that Martin Rothstein had trusted him with, a secret that Gene was not supposed to hear. Gene stared at him, trying to find more words, wanting to vanish because what Robbie had said had to be a lie. It HAD to be! His parents had always told him the truth, had always pushed hard at how important the truth was, how it was more valuable than gold or any other commodity.
“Oh, hey, Gene, don’t listen to your uncle Robbie… I’m just. .. I’m just messing with your head.” Weak. His voice was faint and lacked any conviction. He was lying, trying to backtrack from what he’d just revealed, and both of them knew it was too damned late.
“What do you mean I’m adopted?” His voice was louder than he meant it to be, but the ringing hadn’t left his ears and all the sounds beyond that continuous note sounded like they were muffled by cotton.
“Gene… ”
Gene held up his hand to gesture for silence. Normally the idea of trying to get Robbie to shut up was crazy, but the man listened. “I can’t talk to you, Uncle Rob. I can’t talk to you right now, okay?” He fought back the tears that burned at his eyes.
Damned if he’d let the drunk loser see him cry.
Chapter Twelve
Tina Carlotti
Tina climbed from the train and hauled her duffel bag with her. If anyone was amused by the skinny little girl carrying a sack almost as big as she was, they didn’t show it. Back in Camden they would have, so she kept her peace and made sure to look every last one of them in the eyes. Never flinch and never show fear.
And she was absolutely terrified. The train had stopped in Wilmark, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from upstate New York. She’d planned on heading into New England, but her eyes were aching and her head felt like it wanted to explode and she needed to rest in a safe place and call home, call her mom and get everything worked out.
Mom would be worried. At least she thought so. Mom worried when she, well, when she was sober.
At first she’d considered going back to Camden. She’d even started walking in that direction, but the farther she walked, the more she realized she might be in deep trouble if she came home. She’d taken the time to count the money. It was almost two million dollars. Too much to hide, too much to carry and too much to leave behind. So she went up north. That was all the reason she needed. She wanted to get some distance from Camden and the guys there who might really own the money she was carrying around. Because if she went home, if she got stupid and walked back into her old life with that much money and it belonged to Tony Parmiatto or any of his buddies, she was as good as dead and she’d have bet every dollar she had on her that it would be a slow death and very painful. You don’t steal from the mob; you don’t borrow from the mob without their permission. It was likely that somebody was dead because of the blood she’d been covered with. That somebody was connected to the money. That meant the money was blood money and the mob always collected on those debts. Always.
The mob was not forgiving. She’d learned that when she found out the truth about why her father disappeared. Do the wrong things to the Mafia and they returned the favor. She didn’t know if she had done them wrong or not and wasn’t sure she wanted to find out, but she wasn’t gonna take chances until she talked to someone.
Her legs still ached a little from the long run to jump onto a CS
X car as it slowly rolled past. She’d had to run hard, and yeah, running in flip-flops, not such a great time, slinging the bag with every step. Then the bag went onto the car and she followed it. She slipped once and there was a line of red flesh along with a few scrapes to show where her shin had banged against the steel edge of the train car’s wide door.
There hadn’t been anyone in the car already so she hadn’t had to fight anyone. The sort of people that jumped trains, according to her mom, were the sort that would kill you as soon as look at you. Having seen a few of the men in her time, she could believe it.
She took the time to count the money while she was traveling. Then she counted it a few more times to be sure. Just a little under two million dollars. Crazy money. The sort of money the mob would come for. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh because it was all so damned crazy.
Once Tina was clear of the railroad tracks and the commercial yard where she’d climbed free, she headed down the closest access road. It followed next to I-95 and let her keep her eyes on the prize, as her mom liked to say.
While she walked, she thought about Tony. He was cute and sweet in his way and she didn’t like the idea that he might be the one that the money belonged to. She’d have to call him. She had to know what was going on and how deep she’d stepped in it.
Half a mile farther along she came across a motel. The sign said there were vacancies, and she sat outside in the bushes and watched for a while before going in.
The man behind the desk looked at her through the bulletproof glass that separated them. “Help you?” He looked about as interested in her as he was in watching mold grow on old cheese. That suited her just fine.
“Me and my mom, we need a room.” She’d told more than her share of lies since she was old enough to walk.
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