by Dani Amore
“Shut up or you’re dead,” Tommy said.
She held up her hands, keeping them about a foot apart. “The other night, I gave him some Viagra,” she said. “I could barely walk the next day.”
Tommy began fidgeting.
“And if you think you’re hurting Vincenzo, you’re wrong there, too. He’s the one who set me up with Big Paulie. It’s been that way for years. You see, he wants to keep me happy, but he doesn’t want to have sex with me. So he figures it’s better if one of his own men does me than someone else, someone he can’t control. So you see, you’re not going to accomplish anything by waving that teeny little pathetic thing at me—”
Tommy clocked her over the head with his gun. Gloria’s shoulders sagged. A trickle of blood ran down the side of her face as she slid down the chair to the floor.
Tommy gasped for breath. Beneath his clothes, his body was drenched in sweat. He was nearly hyperventilating. The gun shook in his hand. He looked at the camera and raised his middle finger. An act of bravado lessened by the obvious fear in the trembling hand.
He took one last look at Gloria, then snatched the suitcase from the desk and hurried from the room.
3.
Loreli Karstens stared intently at the computer screen as her fingers flew across the keyboard. There were no pauses, no distinct rhythms, just a fast-paced non-stop gentle clicking. The only parts of her body that moved were her eyes, and those only went back-and-forth.
The last time she’d been tested, she could type over one hundred words a minute. Right now, she was doing at least that, maybe even more. Possibly setting her own personal record. She sat straight in her chair. Her arms held in front of her, her hands seeming to almost hover over the keyboard, the fingers moving in a blur of skin and fingernail polish. Her deep blue eyes raced across the monitor, never once looking down at her slim, elegant fingers.
The prestigious law firm of Ryson, Butters & Mahoney was located in the famed Renaissance Center on Jefferson, in the heart of downtown Detroit. The Renaissance Center was built to be the cornerstone of the urban recovery that Detroit was going to experience. Naturally, it never happened.
Ryson, Butters & Mahoney was in the East Tower, on the forty-fourth floor. It was a large firm, with eight departments and a grand total of fifty-six lawyers and nearly a hundred paralegals and legal secretaries. Unlike most firms in Detroit, it didn’t have General Motors, Ford or Chrysler as its main clientele. RB&M as it was known locally, had a very upscale and very private client base, which was more than happy to pay a premium for discretion.
Loreli’s fingers continued to race across the keyboard. She was like an orchestra, building to a triumphant climax. Her finger hit the final key and it seemed to resonate through the space of her small cubicle perched outside the grand corner office of Carl Ryson. Since Butters was dead and Mahoney was an ailing figurehead with no workload, Carl Ryson was the firm’s number one lawyer.
He was also Loreli’s boss.
In the next room, Carl Ryson and his team of attorneys, junior attorneys and strategists were waiting for Loreli’s document regarding Ryson’s main client, Gibraltar Enterprises and the case they were working on was one of the biggest of the year.
Loreli watched as the computer completed its spell check. She’d already proofed it once, knowing that spell check sometimes missed things. Once that was done, she chose the print command and soon, the one hundred plus page document would begin spewing from the printer just outside her cube. As she listened to the printer firing up, Loreli glanced at the pictures on her desk, next to the phone.
There were two of them. In one, a pretty young woman with blonde hair and blue eyes stood behind a young boy who was a carbon copy of the woman. The boy had on a baseball mitt that was several sizes too large. The woman had on a tank top and shorts. The woman was Loreli, the boy was her son, Liam. The picture had been taken last summer.
The other photo was a studio portrait of Liam. He was dressed in a white shirt and tie. His face was deadly serious. His blue eyes looked huge, like marbles. His skin was smooth, his blonde bangs hung lightly across his forehead. Loreli’s gaze lingered on the picture. She had done everything to get him to smile, but when the photographer snapped, Liam’s smile disappeared. Now, she loved the picture. Liam was a fun-loving kid, always goofing around. Fearless, really. Loreli liked seeing this side of him. As she looked at the picture, she could literally feel his hair on her fingertips as she brushed it from his forehead. Could feel his soft cheek as she kissed him goodnight.
It was all worth it. Working as a legal secretary in the pressure cooker atmosphere of the law firm. Every time she looked at Liam, she rededicated herself to her job. To the paycheck that kept both of them going.
The computer beeped, letting Loreli know the document had been saved. She hit print and when the printer had spat out all of the pages, she made eleven collated copies, snapped them into binders and delivered them to Ryson’s office.
Carl Ryson’s corner office was ridiculously large. At one point, Loreli had heard that it was actually three offices that Ryson had torn apart and converted into one single piece of symbolically powerful real estate. The office was on the eastern side of the tower, which provided Ryson with an impressive view of the Detroit River, Canada and Lake St. Claire.
As big and ostentatious as the office was, Ryson wore it well. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his early sixties, although he looked at least ten years younger. He jogged everyday along the waterfront, fearless of the sometimes dangerous element that loitered along the different sections of the city. He had a carefully combed silver mane that swept back dramatically, revealing a broad, powerful face. His slate gray eyes, which could transfix juries and project nearly every emotion in the human spectrum, now twinkled at Loreli.
“Thank you, Loreli. Is a copy of the deposition ready to be filed tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, it’s all set, with extra copies ready just in case.”
“Do you have the...” he searched his note pad until Loreli spoke. “The corroborating interviews?”
Ryson nodded, putting down his note pad.
“They’re ready as well, along with clean copies of both your notes and the corresponding archival records. Just as you asked.”
“Jesus Christ, you know what I need before I even have to ask.” He smiled at her. “I’ll see you in the morning, then, before I head to court.”
“Six a.m. sharp.”
“Loreli, you are the glue that holds this place together.” She smiled and turned to the door.
“Thank you, Carl. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Ryson nodded and she turned to go, catching the eyes of one of the junior attorneys. She ignored him, and went back to her cubicle. Loreli got hit on at least once a week in the office. A single mom, a secretary, surrounded by arrogant, overworked and overstressed young attorneys with money to burn and no time to meet anyone outside the office. It was bound to happen. She was politely insistent in her rebuttals, as she thought of them. She had no desire to piss anyone off, or hurt anyone’s feelings, but she drew the line. The paycheck wasn’t much, but it was all she and Liam had. It was too much to risk for a quick fling that wouldn’t go anywhere. And although word had gotten out that she wasn’t interested in office romances, the crushing workload created a revolving door of younger attorneys, who weren’t aware of Loreli’s policy, only of their own raging hormones and lack of life outside the firm.
Loreli straightened her desk, organized papers into their proper folders, then shut down her computer, and grabbed her purse. She walked down the hallway to the deserted lobby where she waited for the elevator. Most of the secretaries were gone, along with the research staff and the non-litigant attorneys. The majority of people who would work well into the night were the junior attorneys, trying to bill a hundred hours a week in order to garner the attention of the firm’s management and begin the slow, tortuous ascent to junior partner.
The el
evator dinged and she stepped inside. She hit the button for the Lower Level. The ride down was uninterrupted; forty-three floors of companies whose employees had knocked down the door promptly at five and were already on their way home. Loreli didn’t blame them, nor did she envy them. She had a job to do and she did it right. Period. But now, inside the elevator, she shut off the agile mind of the legal secretary and thought only of Liam. She couldn’t wait to see him.
The doors opened onto the parking garage, and Loreli walked past the Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes before getting to her beige Toyota Camry. It had a bubbling patch of rust over the right rear wheel well, and some of the rubber stripping below both doors was coming off. Each strip was bending back and every time Loreli saw them, she smiled, remembering the time Liam had told her they looked like wings.
There were other problems with the car. The speedometer worked sporadically, the air conditioner blew hot air and there were more than a few spots of rust around the car, but Loreli didn’t care. The thing was paid for. And it was hers. And it got her where she needed to go.
She opened the door, climbed in and started the car up. The engine responded hesitantly, but Loreli gave it a little gas and it picked up quickly. She pumped the brakes a couple times; there was a leak in the brake line and she had just added some brake fluid this morning.
Loreli pulled out of her space, drove to the gate, held up her security card and when the giant white arm raised, drove out onto Jefferson Avenue. She turned on the radio and punched the button for her favorite rock station.
A song was playing that she liked and she turned the volume way up. One thing about her car: it was a piece of crap, but its sound system got the job done. Loreli’s left foot tapped to the rhythm of the song. She rolled down the window and let the warm air inside, then checked her cell phone for messages, but there weren’t any.
Loreli thought of Liam’s father. Which was always strange because Liam didn’t really have a father. Well, technically, he did. But for all intents and purposes he didn’t. Which was fine with Loreli. Liam’s father was the single biggest mistakes of her life. But that part of her life was over.
She pushed that line of thinking from her mind, like a house guest who’d overstayed his welcome, and sang out loud to the song on the radio. She concentrated on the future. She wasn’t going to be a legal secretary forever. She was good at it, and she would keep at it for a little while longer, but in a year, she planned to go back to college, to finish her degree and go to law school. Eventually, she wanted to start her own practice. Do lots of pro bono work for low-income single moms.
Loreli knew she could do it. She was as smart as most of the attorneys at Ryson, Butters & Mahoney. In fact, there were a few to whom she could give some pointers.
The old Loreli, the Loreli of five or six years ago probably wouldn’t have allowed a thought like that. But the new Loreli didn’t have any problem making the call. If her past had taught her one thing, it was to rely on herself when she wanted to get something done.
I-696 West was crowded as usual. Loreli pulled the Camry into the middle lane and notched the speedometer at 70. Any higher and the little car would start to shudder and vibrate. She took the Van Dyke Road exit North to Thirteen Mile Road. From there, she turned onto Irene Street, a quite neighborhood of mostly blue collar workers in the suburb of Warren. Warren was considered one of the most blue collar of Detroit’s suburbs. It was home to two General Motors and Chrysler plants.
Loreli’s house was a brick ranch built in the fifties. There was a one-car garage. The flowers Loreli had planted were in full bloom. The front yard was small, but the grass was green and lush. It was a well-kept, if extremely modest house.
Loreli parked the car in the garage and walked to the front door to check the mailbox. A catalog for children’s toys and the phone bill.
She went up the front steps and opened the front door.
And her mouth dropped open.
Ted Haldeman, Liam’s father, sat in a chair, facing the door. Thick bands of duct tape covered his arms and legs, holding him to the chair. There was duct tape all over him. His chest. His neck. Duct tape around his ankles, around his crotch. There were even a few strips wrapped around his mouth.
Dried blood streaked down Ted’s face. A tack had been smashed into his forehead. Beneath the tack was a small slip of paper, splotched in places by blood.
“Liam!” Loreli screamed.
There was no answer.
In the chair, Ted shook his head from side-to-side.
Loreli went to him and ripped the piece of paper from Ted’s forehead. Before she even read the note, she knew what was happening.
Her worst nightmare had come true.
She read the note aloud. “Bring the money to The Venus Arcade in Troy if you want your package back.”
She ripped the duct tape from Ted’s mouth.
“Uhhh,” Ted said. His head sagged and small drops of blood appeared on the skin that had been relieved of the duct tape.
Loreli grabbed Ted by the front of his shirt. “Where is Liam?”
“Dexter took him to scare me,” he said, his eyes pinched shut. “Don’t worry. I‘ll get him his five grand. All I need...”
Before he could finish the sentence, Loreli slapped him. The blow rang out in the quiet of the room. Ted’s head snapped back, then lolled to the side. She stepped back and drove a fist into the middle of his face. Blood poured from his nose. Loreli raked her nails across Ted’s face, her teeth grinding so hard she felt a small piece break off in her mouth. She spit it out, then grabbed a handful of Ted’s hair with her left hand and smashed her right fist into his mouth. His lips split and blood gushed from his mouth.
Loreli turned and ran from the house, her car keys in hand.
Behind her, Ted’s head sunk to his chest.
4.
“I’m not happy with you,” Vincenzo Romano said to the doctor. It was the tone of voice that he’d used to scare his enemies into submission, or to keep his lieutenants in line. The doctor, a talented oncologist and surgeon and a normally supremely self-confident man, suddenly felt unnerved.
“The procedure...” the doctor began.
“Was nothing like you’d said it would be,” Romano interrupted. “I distinctly recall you saying things like, ‘minor pain,’ and ‘inconvenience.’ What I’m feeling isn’t minor and it’s a hell of a lot more than inconvenient.”
“There was significantly more bleeding than we’d expected,” the doctor said, his voice softer and lacking the assertiveness most of his patients experienced. Patient Romano was special. They didn’t teach him that in medical school. It was a skill handed down through the ages; it was called survival instinct.
“I’m very sorry if you’re in pain, we’ll get you on the proper medication and make sure your recovery is smooth and as free of pain as possible.”
Romano looked at the doctor, then softened his gaze. He wasn’t used to another man hurting him. The few who had were now at the bottom of the Detroit River. The doctor had done his job, if the procedure had a few difficulties, he would let it go. He wasn’t about to whack the guy. Besides, the most important job the doctor had was ongoing: no one was to find out what kind of procedure the head of the Detroit mafia had received.
A mastectomy.
Romano pictured himself at a rally, surrounded by women all with their arms around each other singing folk songs. And there he’d be, ol’ half-tit Romano, legendary crime boss now emblazoned with his new moniker: breast cancer survivor.
“Let me talk to you about maintenance,” the doctor said. Ordinarily, Romano would have an underling here to take notes. But everyone had been led to believe that he was in Vegas. Gloria knew, but that was it. And that’s the way it would stay. A thing like this could undermine his reputation and in his business, a reputation was sometimes more important than what you actually did. When he’d found the lump more than two months ago, he hadn’t thought twice. In fact, it had becom
e a nervous tic, in meetings or on the phone, he’d found himself gently caressing his left breast. Finally, at his annual check-up, he’d mentioned it to the doctor.
In no time, he was under the knife.
“So we’ll expect to see you back in a week, Mr. Romano.”
An hour later, he was discharged and in a cab, headed for home.
***
Romano sat stiffly in the big leather chair in the living room, his eyes staring straight ahead. His face, usually splashed with color and an underlying ruddiness, was now pale and wan. A thin sheen of sweat had broken out along his forehead.
Nick Falcone walked into the room with the hesitancy of a dog caught stealing the master’s shoe.
“How you doin’, boss?” he asked.
“Shut up Nick.”
His voice was thick. His words came out soft but harsh. The doctor had told him that he had to take it easy for a few days. Rest. Relax. Try not to get upset over the fact that his left breast had been completely removed. Sure doc, he thought, ol’ Don Half-Tit was going to just relax. Romano stared at Nick Falcone. He felt the black rage rise within him, the kind that doesn’t heed the advice of doctors and significant others.
“What the hell were you thinking, Nick?” Romano said.
“Boss,” Nick began, but Romano cut him off.
“We got a million bakeries in Grosse Pointe! We are the goddamn bakery capital of the free world. We got scones and éclairs and bagels and donuts and every other kind of baked good coming out our asses.”
“I know, Boss, but—”
“Then why in the name of God would you let Tommy Abrocci talk you into driving all the way out to Birmingham for some goddamn scones? Are you insane? Have you completely lost the ability to think for yourself?”
“But he said Mrs. Romano—”
