The Lonely Witness

by William Boyle

  Alessandra doesn’t say anything. She gets in the car, pulling the door closed behind her. The car idles a moment longer, but then the driver throws it into reverse and backs out of the block, swerving onto Twenty-Fourth and headed in the direction of Cropsey Avenue, of the Belt Parkway, of escape.

  Amy walks toward the church. Her heart’s beating fast. She’s not sure what she’s headed for. But she can’t walk away. She’s afraid, but she’s alive in her fear.

  Firefighters drag hoses into the lot. They’re saying things, but the sound of the world is dull to her. The fire must be making sound, too, but she can’t hear it. There must be flames inside, but she doesn’t see them. Only the smoke. The smell is strong. It smells like a church burning. A bank burning would be different. Or a bar. Or a house. A church burning smells like the end of everything.

  The rectory is totally dark. Monsignor Ricciardi might still be with Diane. Maybe she needed to go to the hospital, and maybe he went with her. He would do that. He would sit with her for however long it took.

  Since she can’t cut through the lot, Amy rushes around the corner, past the school, and comes out on the Eighty-Fifth Street side of the church. A small crowd has gathered at the corner. Four cop cars and an ambulance, lights spinning. Another fire truck with pulsing hoses blocking off the lot.

  Dom’s Daytona is up on the sidewalk in front of the church, crashed against the iron gate just beyond the stoop, doors thrown open, trunk gaping, that bungee cord hanging loose from the lid. The headlights are still on, illuminating Alessandra’s suitcase on the sidewalk. Meaning Dom backed up and sped forward onto the sidewalk, or maybe tried to turn around in the lot and things backfired. No sign of him. Or Fred.

  The glass front door of the church that Dom shot out has been totally kicked clean. One of the glass doors beyond that in the lobby has also been broken, likely shot out and then pushed through. Amy can see fire in the church, on the altar, the canopy and coverings and altar protector screaming with flames.

  Mr. Pezzolanti is standing by a group of cops, mopping his head with a white handkerchief. He sees her and comes over. “Amy?” he says, as if he can’t believe any of this is really happening.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “This is horrible.”

  He shakes his head. “That guy who hit your old man is off his goddamn rocker.”

  “What happened?”

  “He got in his car and backed up and tried to mow down your old man again. Tried to get me this time, too. But he crashed and jumped out, then grabbed these bags he had in his car and headed for the church. Your old man went and confronted him, waving a finger in his face. I don’t know where he got the energy after being clipped by the car. You should’ve heard him. ‘You leave my daughter be!’ He called him about fifty kinds of a son of a bitch. The guy was shaken up from hitting the gate. But then he got it together and started waving his piece around. That’s when the first cops showed.”

  Mr. Pezzolanti is shaking with the improbability of the story. He seems less upset that the church he’s gone to his whole life is on fire and more amped up by all the wild action. “Next thing, this guy kicks in through the doors of the church. Like Jimmy Cagney. ‘You’ll never get me!’ That kind of thing. Real goddamn dummy, this guy. Your old man follows him in like he’s on hero patrol, you believe that? The cops are yelling. They’ve got their pieces out, too. This fire starts somehow. I don’t know what the guy did in there.”

  “They haven’t come out?”

  “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “I don’t believe this.”

  Mr. Pezzolanti puts an arm around her. “You poor kid.”

  Amy can’t believe that Mr. Pezzolanti’s read of the situation with all that he’s seen is that she’s someone to feel sympathy for. The way she hardly did anything when Fred got hit. The way her decisions led to putting him and Alessandra and Diane and Fred and everyone in peril. The way there’d be no fire if she’d just had some common sense. She doesn’t correct him. It’s nice to feel like this poor kid he’s seeing for a second.

  “Your friend okay?” Mr. Pezzolanti says.

  “She’s gone.”

  “Her bag’s still over there.”

  Amy shrugs.

  “Why don’t you come sit down?” Mr. Pezzolanti points to the low brick gate of the yard outside the apartment building on the corner.

  “I’m okay,” Amy says.

  The cops have settled into doing not much of anything now. A little crowd control. They look like movie cops. Sleek uniforms, confused sneers. They’re happy to stand back and let the firefighters try to save the church. The guy with the gun inside and the old man who raced in after him, she guesses they’re chalking them up as dead meat.

  To watch the fire is to look into an open wound.

  She feels twitchy with the possibility that Monsignor Ricciardi will show up any minute and that he’ll fall to his knees and break down crying.

  “I’ll be right back,” Amy says to Mr. Pezzolanti, stepping out of his grasp, his arm falling awkwardly to his side. He seems to have no purpose if he can’t comfort her.

  The guilt is too much. She can’t watch anymore.

  What Amy’s thinking is she’ll go back to the apartment and grab her backpack and take off. She’ll walk away from the fire, away from Mr. Pezzolanti, in the direction that Alessandra went in the Uber. She’ll go to Twenty-Fifth Avenue and catch the D train. She’ll ride it all the way into the city and switch for the J or M there. She’ll be with Gwen in a couple of hours.

  As she moves away from Mr. Pezzolanti, she takes out her phone and texts Gwen: Headed for train now. Gwen instantly texts back an emoji, but because Amy’s phone is old and not capable of handling the symbol, it shows up as a question mark in a box.

  Her next thought is about Alessandra’s suitcase, sitting out there on the sidewalk. Maybe Amy will take it with her. It’s got wheels. That way, she’ll have an in. She can call Alessandra at some point and offer to mail it. She’s seen people just mail suitcases at the post office. Or she can have everything that’s in it. Wear Alessandra’s underwear and bras and T-shirts. Use that beach perfume. Take those pills. She’ll be able to feel like Alessandra. And the medal that she’d stolen from Mrs. Epifanio, she’ll keep it. She’s strong. She’ll wear it to remind herself that you can say fuck you in the face of fire. But that’s ridiculous. She’s no Joan of Arc. This fire is hers to carry.

  She crosses the street in front of a police cruiser and stares at the suitcase in the headlights of Dom’s car. Going for it wouldn’t put her in the path of the firefighters. All she’d have to do is lean down, pick it up, and head for her apartment. She could be seen, sure. By Mr. Pezzolanti, or Monsignor Ricciardi if he shows. And Dom’s unaccounted for, of course.

  Still, she makes her move.

  As she pulls out the handle of the suitcase and rights it, she thinks she sees something out of the corner of her eye. It’s nothing. The suitcase is hers. She drags it behind her on the clunky sidewalk, headed for the apartment.

  She thinks of Alessandra in that white Malibu with tinted windows, on her way to the airport hotel. She won’t come back. There’s no way. The neighborhood is a necklace of scars for her. Plus, that’s just not Alessandra. She’ll pick up someone at the hotel bar, try to find a new lie to help her forget what she wants to forget.

  The front door to Amy’s apartment is open. She knows she left it open. She props the suitcase out by the gate and runs in to grab her backpack.

  She sees Fred first, and then she sees Dom. They’re sitting at the table, soot on their faces, the purse and the yellow pillowcase—all that jewelry— lumped between them. Dom has the gun tilted on Fred. “I should’ve killed you when I had the chance,” he says again to Amy.

  Amy wonders if she could bolt out the door before Dom squeezes off a shot. If she could do that and make a break for the church, she’ll have a halo of cops around her. She’ll be safe, and she’ll be able to point them to Dom. But he
’s turned the gun on her already, and she’s not confident that she’d be able to pull it off.

  “Put the gun back on me,” Fred says.

  “I like the gun where it is,” Dom says.

  “What do you want?” Amy says. “I didn’t tell anybody. I won’t tell anybody.”

  “You were talking to my mother,” Dom says. “You were gonna tell her it was me who did Vincent. I couldn’t have that. That’s why I came back.” He pauses. “She told you they were fucking, huh? They were. Vincent stole my shit with the intention of also stealing my mother. They were gonna run off together, you believe that? Old lady like her and a piece of shit like him.”

  Amy stares outside. She wishes someone would pass and look in. All she sees is the swirling blue police lights.

  “I bet you got a lot of questions,” Dom says.

  “Why’d you have to set the church on fire?” Amy asks.

  “He did it as a distraction,” Fred says. “Used a candle to get it started. I tried to stop him.”

  “Shut up,” Dom says.

  “We got out through the back door of the sacristy,” Fred says, his head down. “Cut through the yard of the rectory and a couple of other backyards to get over here. He had the gun on me. I’m sorry.”

  “I said, shut up,” Dom says to Fred. And then to Amy: “Listen, what I need from you now is to get us out of here. You have a car?”

  Amy shakes her head.

  “Your landlord have a car?”

  She doesn’t shake her head. She doesn’t nod.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.”

  “You’re gonna kill me,” Amy says. “Why would I help you?”

  “You got no options, Amy. I need you to get the keys somehow. And then I need you to get me to this car. You play it right, maybe I won’t have to kill you. I’ll bring you with me where I’m going. You can be, like, my servant.” That smile again. Pleased with himself. “We’ll get out of here. Don’t you worry. I’m not the smartest guy around, but I’m lucky as fuck.”

  Fred leans forward and smacks the gun out of Dom’s hand. It goes skittering across the floor. “Run!” Fred shouts to Amy.

  Instead of going straight out the door, Amy breaks for the bed and grabs her backpack just as Dom erupts from his chair and dives for the gun. Fred’s after him, wrestling at his legs.

  Amy slings the backpack over her shoulder and turns for the door.

  Dom kicks loose of Fred and gets a hand on the gun. He’s up on his knees and elbows.

  Amy crosses the threshold, and she’s back outside, her hand on the foil-covered railing, moving toward the gate. Dom fires, and the bullet sings past her, thumping into Alessandra’s suitcase and knocking it over. She hopes the cops can hear it but doubts they can, with all that’s going on. She’s lucky, as was Alessandra, that he’s such a bad shot.

  He tells her to freeze.

  She doesn’t. She cuts left out of the gate and runs as hard as she can.

  She shouldn’t look back, but she does. Dom’s out the door. He’s after her. Fred’s after him, hobbling. The cops will have to see this. Dom’s got the gun on her. That unsteady hand. Her luck, he’ll take another shot and it’ll kill a sleeping baby in one of these houses. Just slip through a wall or window and zip straight into a crib.

  “Stop, Amy!” he calls out. “Or I’ll kill your old man!”

  Her head’s twisted to keep an eye on him, but she doesn’t stop.

  He turns and fires into Fred. Two shots. Fred’s so close even Dom can’t miss. One in the chest and one in the stomach. Fred doesn’t make any noise. He goes down, his arms at his side.

  Amy stops, out of breath.

  “I told you,” Dom says, as if he’s forgotten where he is and who’s there and what’s going on. He looks at Amy and then looks back beyond Fred. Three cops are charging him from the church, guns drawn, yelling for him to put down his gun.

  Dom doesn’t put down his gun.

  Amy gets low and takes cover between two parked cars. She closes her eyes. She doesn’t see what happens, but she can imagine it. A shot from Dom and then immediate return fire from the cops. When she peeks out from around the edge of the bumper, Dom’s down, shot in the head. Two of the cops come to a stop when they get to his side, their guns still fixed on him. His gun has slipped away from his hand. He’s nothing but dead. The other cop is with Fred, checking on him. Fred’s still alive, she can tell.

  She stands and walks past Dom and the cops. The cops turn on her with their guns. They’re not a hundred percent sure of anything.

  “That’s my dad,” she says, the word strange in her mouth.

  They lower the guns and focus on their radios. More smoke rises from the church, ribboning over the block.

  Amy arrives at Fred’s side and kneels close to him. His eyes are open.

  The cop who’s there says, “The ambulance is at the end of the block. They’ll be here in a sec.” This cop has a baby face. He looks maybe twenty. A small mole over his lip. Thick eyebrows. Muscles everywhere. His neck, his chest, his legs. His body is flooded with awful muscles. He’s kneeling, too, and his pants look like they might rip. She catches the glare of a streetlamp in his shiny boot.

  Fred’s trying to say something, his face smudged black, his color fading, his beard fluttering with every pained breath.

  “Save your energy,” Amy says.

  “Hold me,” he finally manages to say.

  She nods. She gets closer and puts her arms under him and pulls him up into her lap. She looks down and sees where he’s been shot. Both spots ugly, pulsing, wet.

  The cop seems like he might protest the move, but then he thinks better of it. “You’re his daughter?” the cop says.

  “Yeah, I am,” Amy says. Her father is in her arms. Now she feels the heaviness of blood, how they’re linked, no matter what.

  “I’m here,” she says to him. She’s not crying. She doesn’t feel like she’s capable of it. She can’t help but think of all that jewelry back on the table in her apartment.

  Fred’s trying to make words again. “I’m … glad,” he says. “Glad I’m … gonna die looking up at you.” His lips twist into something close to a smile.

  Smoke and silence. Her father. He. Amy feels like a glove being turned inside out. She will stay to witness this. It’s the least she can do.

  EPILOGUE

  Amy is alone, down by Gravesend Bay. She’s leaning against the hood of an ’89 Chevy Caprice. Blue and clean. It was Mr. Pezzolanti’s car. He said for her to just take it, but she wanted to pay him. She gave him a thousand dollars. The stolen jewelry is in the trunk. So is the backpack with the rest of the money, Alessandra’s bullet-torn suitcase, and Amy’s egg crate full of records and whatever else she’d initially thought she’d have to leave behind, back when it was too much to carry. She’s even brought along her hot pot and electric kettle.

  Her father’s ashes are in a coffee can at her feet. Her plan is to empty his ashes into the water, and here’s as good a place as any. The Verrazano in all its looming glory. The sun on the water. The rocks. The feeling that people biking and running and fishing on the promenade that goes from Ceasar’s Bay Bazaar all the way to the Sixty-Ninth Street Pier in Bay Ridge are doing so with purpose.

  The tin coffee can is striped with the colors of the Italian flag. Medaglia d’Oro. Mr. Pezzolanti gave it to her. At the funeral home, they wanted to sell her a container to store the ashes in. She had no need for that. She knew she’d just be scattering Fred somewhere. At first, she figured Queens. And then she thought on the road, in a quiet stream, or from some mountain cliff where neither of them had ever been, somewhere hidden and new. But here is fine. It’s fine.

  This past week has been a blur. She had to explain everything to the police and to Diane. What she saw. Dom killing Vincent. Dom threatening her. She’s sure some of it didn’t add up, especially to Diane, who would probably always believe that Amy played some bigger part in this, the wedge that divided Dom and
Vincent. No one knows about the jewelry, not yet.

  Amy avoided Monsignor Ricciardi until she couldn’t anymore. He was broken up about the fire in the church. He didn’t blame her for it. There was so much to untangle, and she couldn’t do much to untangle it. Talking to Mrs. Epifanio was useless. Mrs. Mescolotto was in public mourning and washed down a bottle of sleeping pills with her expensive vodka and didn’t die. Everyone knew what Dom had done to Vincent. They didn’t quite know why. Everyone talked him up as a hothead, said he was bound for an end like this.

  Amy’s been staying with Gwen in Williamsburg. Her nights have been boozy and long. She’s tired. Her eyes are heavy. She’s back here to dump her old man in the water, and then she’s taking off for good.

  Alessandra texted her the day after Fred died to let her know she was home in Los Angeles, walking dogs and pretending to give a shit about yoga. She didn’t ask what happened after she split, didn’t show any concern or wonder how bad things had gotten. Amy didn’t say much in response either, nothing at all about her plans. She wants Alessandra to be surprised if she just shows up one day out of the blue, with her suitcase and money to burn. Look, Amy would be able to say. It came true, that long-shot dream. An opportunity presented itself, and I took it.

  But Alessandra’s not what she needs; she knows that now. What she needs is to get lost on her own terms.

  It hadn’t been hard to keep all the jewelry to herself. No one knew it was sitting there in her apartment, and the cops didn’t have a reason to go in there at any point. The only information she had was from Dom. Mr. Mescolotto didn’t even know this stuff was missing, didn’t even know what was at the center of this whole thing. Maybe he would in the weeks to come, but she’d be gone, trying to figure out how to sell it all. Now, his son shot dead by cops, his wife in the hospital, he had other things to deal with.

  Amy’s got a map on the passenger seat. She bought it at a shop in Williamsburg and circled all the cities she’s been considering as possible stops: Austin, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, maybe even Los Angeles. She’s memorized routes she’d like to explore, marked off tourist attractions and parks and lakes. She’s going to pass through places she’s never been, never thought she’d see. She’s going to stay in cheap motels and watch cable TV and take sad showers with those sad little bars of soap and eat pancakes in truck stops. Eventually, she’ll find an apartment with a big bright window where she can keep a cactus on the sill. Mr. Pezzolanti’s car—her car now—has a tape deck, and she’s going to listen to all her cassettes. She’s going to play them loud. They’re on the passenger seat next to the map, lined up in a shoe box. She likes to look at the names of the bands and the titles of the albums scrawled on their white spines.