by Greg Enslen
A cop walked up to him. “You need to get out of here, buddy.”
Vincent nodded. “Yes, officer. That’s my car. Can I move it? I’m afraid it might be in the way of the firefighters.”
“Yeah, it is. Can you tell me something, though...” the cop said, walking Vincent around to the side of the Mustang away from the fire.
There were at least twenty large-caliber bullet holes punched into the side of the automobile.
Vincent smiled and shook his head. “What the hell happened here? I park my car here to do some gambling, then come out and find this?” He looked at the cop and shook his head again. “I don’t know what to tell you, sir.”
The cop smiled, leaning a little closer. “I don’t think you’ve been gambling, Mr. Luciano. I ran your plate a minute after I got here. This looks like gunfire, and there are a lot of curious people around, wondering what happened here.
“Fortunately,” the cop said quietly, “I’m the only one who knows about this car of yours. I’ve been hanging around, hoping you’d show.”
The cop smiled.
Vincent looked at the man, gauging him, and he suddenly understood. He unzipped the bag a little and reached in, pulling out a small wad of cash. The cop was looking around, making sure no one was watching.
Vincent set the money on the Mustang, and the cop quickly pocketed it. Vincent had learned a long time ago never to hand money directly to someone—it gave them a chance to honestly say they found it if they were ever questioned or subjected to a polygraph.
“Can I go now?” Vincent asked.
The cop nodded, backing away. “Sure, Mr. Luciano. And I hope you remember that I helped you out.”
Vincent nodded and climbed into the Mustang, tossing the duffle bag onto the passenger seat. The cop cleared a path for him through the fire trucks and police cars to the road leading away from the dock. The cop also waved him though the police line set up to keep spectators back.
As the Mustang passed him, the cop gave Vincent a jaunty little salute, and smiled.
Vincent couldn’t help but smile back.
Chapter 57
The room was cleaned and someone had turned the beds down for them. Gary flipped on the TV, but there was nothing that caught his interest. He had told Mike he was tired and wanted to get some rest, but in truth he had just wanted to get away from the Mayfest.
He sat for a few minutes at the table by the window, repeatedly shuffling and laying out the tarot cards, doing a few readings, but it didn’t calm him down. The same cards seemed to be coming up, over and over, and none of them made any sense. The “Fire” cards kept coming up, over and over, but he didn’t understand what they could mean. Dr. Myers had called the deck of cards his “talisman,” but it didn’t feel like the cards had any magical powers tonight.
After an hour in the room, he left and went to the restaurant. It was busy, with all the booths taken, but he found a seat at the counter. Doris, the nice lady who had served him and Mike dinner the night before, came over, smiling at him.
“Can I get you something, son?” she asked, opening her notepad in a way that instantly reminded Gary of Captain Kirk flipping open his communicator—strange how the smallest things can seem funny, he thought.
“Yeah, can I get a beer?”
Just one drink. He didn’t think one beer would kill him, and a beer would really hit the spot right now.
She shook her head. “Sorry, son.” She nodded at the arched doorway that led into The Hole. “Can’t serve alcohol except in the lounge. You’ll have to head in there.”
He thanked her and stood, walking into The Hole. The place was packed. He waited in the crowd near the bar until he was able to order a bottle, paid for it, and headed for a quiet corner. All the tables and every seat at the bar were filled, and the crowded area near the bar was starting to spill out into the seating area. Gary saw that part of the dance floor had been cleared and that someone was setting up a drum set.
Suddenly, he was glad he’d come. The place was bustling and full of activity, and he needed the distraction. But he didn’t get the feeling anyone was recognizing him. And there was going to be a band, hopefully something loud to get his mind off his troubles.
He sipped his beer and tried to put it all into perspective.
Gary was pretty sure the whole dream had just been a way for his mind to get him to come back here and remember his past. He doubted that Judy was in any kind of serious trouble. The girl probably wouldn’t remember him anyway—the old woman had told Mike that she had made her choices. Gary thought she probably didn’t need him showing up after so long.
Finishing with the drum set, the guy working on the band’s instruments propped a couple of guitars up against their stands and plugged them in. He tested them by strumming a couple of chords and tapping the foot pedals on the floor, making different sounds come out of the speakers on either side of the dance floor. Gary was watching the guy work as people jostled past him on their way to the restrooms.
The last thing the guy set up was a microphone stand. He tested it by speaking into it over and over until the sound guy at the back of the room waved at him. Gary thought that if the band had a sound guy and roadies to set up their equipment, they must be pretty good.
“You bitch!” Gary heard from somewhere in the bar.
He felt the skin crawl up the back of his neck. He knew that voice.
Gary glanced around but didn’t see anyone. After a minute, he went back to watching the roadie setting up.
“I told you to shut up, didn’t I?” someone shouted, and Gary instantly knew.
Gary watched as a man stood up from one of the booths—he’d been sitting, and Gary hadn’t been able to see him.
It was him. It was the guy from the dream—Vincent Luciano. Gary knew that voice anywhere—he’d been listening to it every night for months.
Vincent was a big guy, smiling and laughing with a group of guys huddled around one of the bar tables. As he watched, the man picked up a large duffel bag that had been sitting on the floor beside his feet under the booth. He reached into it, taking out small bundles and tossing them to each of the guys at the table. They were stacks of money.
Vincent turned and looked at Gary.
Gary’s stomach leapt into his chest and he looked away, hoping the guy had not seen him. Out of the corner of his eye, Gary watched as Vincent stood and approached.
Slinking down into the chair with his beer up to his face, Gary closed his eyes and willed the man to ignore him. Vincent pushed through the crowd past Gary and into the bathroom in the back.
Gary relaxed slightly, but didn’t know what to do.
There was obviously a feeling around here about the guy—the crowd had parted like the Red Sea when he passed through, and it didn’t seem out of the ordinary for him to pass out large stacks of cash at the table. No one questioned or confronted him. He looked like a thug, wide across the shoulders and with an angular and intelligent face, like a weasel or a vulture.
Suddenly he felt sorry for Judy. If this was her husband, she was in more danger than anyone knew. This guy looked like a killer.
Vincent didn’t stay in the bathroom long, and Gary watched warily as the man passed him—he was wearing snakeskin boots with short chains that jingled when he walked. Vincent returned to his table, but he didn’t sit back down. He said something to his friends, grabbed the large duffel bag, and headed for the door.
Impulsively, Gary followed.
He didn’t really know why he was doing it, but it seemed like the right thing to do.
Vincent walked through the restaurant and out the door, only stopping long enough to flip a small wad of bills to Doris, the waitress. Vincent smiled as the woman caught the bills, looked at them for a moment, and then threw them back at him. Vincent caught the bills as Gary watched from the archway that led into The Hole. Vincent kicked the restaurant doors open and headed outside, laughing heartily.
Gary waited a couple
of moments and followed Vincent outside.
Vincent was climbing into a shiny Mustang. There were strange holes along the passenger side, and the passenger window and the back window were both broken out. The guy tossed the bag into the passenger seat and started the car.
Gary began walking toward his rental car when two large hands grabbed him roughly, spinning him around.
“Who are you, man?” a rough-looking punk asked him, holding onto his jacket. “What do you want with Vince?”
He was one of the guys from Vincent’s table. The guy’s breath smelled like beer and he looked like he’d been smoking for several hours straight—his eyes were so red that for a moment Gary thought the guy might have pinkeye.
Gary shrugged, his eyes wide.
“Nothing! I just thought that was Vincent Luciano,” Gary said, trying to sound giddy and a little star struck. “I’ve always wanted to meet him—he’s famous!”
Gary didn’t know if it sounded convincing or not, but he was trying. The guy backed off and let go of Gary’s jacket. Behind him, Gary heard the Mustang drive off.
“Oh,” the big guy answered, a little confused. “Uh, yeah, well, that was him, all right.”
Gary turned to look at the road as the lights of the Mustang headed off to the west. “Wow, do you know him? He’s like a rock star!”
The man stood a little taller. “Yeah, he’s a friend of mine, so I guess that makes me famous, too, right?”
“Really? I was going to ask him for his autograph, but I guess I could get yours too—you know, I think he’ll be really famous someday. Maybe you will be, too! Do you work for him?”
This was making Gary’s stomach turn, but the guy seemed to be buying it.
The man nodded. “You think he’ll be famous? Yeah, I guess so. Sure, you can have my autograph if you want it.” The guy reached into his pocket and pulled out a wadded-up napkin. “You got a pen I can borrow? And what’s your name?”
Gary nodded, handing him a pen. He said the first name that popped into his head.
“Chris. My name’s Chris.”
The guy signed his napkin with a flourish, smiling, and handed it and the pen over. “I can ask him for an autograph for you, the next time I see him, if you want.”
“Wow, that would be great,” Gary smiled like an idiot. “I better get going. Thanks again!”
Nodding, the guy turned and went back inside, and Gary looked down at the napkin. It was signed “To Chris.” Why had that name popped out first? Gary stuffed the napkin in his pocket and hurried off to the car. He wasn’t really sure what he was doing, but it felt right.
Backing out of the parking lot, he sped off to the west, looking for the Mustang.
------
The decision was made, and she had made it for herself, something of a rarity. It was probably the last decision she would ever make.
Judy was going to kill herself.
But she wanted someone else to know what had happened, someone to know the pain she had gone through. The only person she could think of was Vincent, but he would certainly never empathize with her. She’d tried too many times to get him to think about her as a person instead of something to be used, but he never had paid attention.
Vincent loved his new car, though.
She needed to figure out when he would be coming home and step out into the road in the path of his speeding car.
Blackwood Lane was dark and twisty for much of its length, but the forest was particularly dark near the turn into their driveway. Streetlights were rare along the country road, and there were none on the stretch by their driveway, and tall, ominous trees closely lined each side of the road. The road was only two lanes wide and the trees and deep ditches along the sides left little in the way of a shoulder. She would walk across this field, wait in the trees for his sound of his car, and then step out in front of it.
When the car slammed into her, the impact should kill her instantly, painlessly. It was certainly a better fate than the next twenty years of her life, if she managed to live that long. She didn’t think she would make it another year or two, the way the beatings had been lately. And without her paintings....
No, he would kill her instantly. Or he would swerve and wreck his car, killing himself. Either way she would be free. It was a win–win situation.
Not that she dreaded dying. The thought actually pleased her. She was tired of life, tired of the beatings and the pain. She was tired of thinking about the way things might have been, tired of wondering what happened to all her dreams.
Judy Luciano was tired of everything.
She got up, leaving a rounded impression in the moist earth where she’d been sitting. Pulling her loose white shirt around her, she glanced across the muddy field at the house, but there was nothing in there that could help her now. There was nothing there that she needed, not where she was going.
She glanced at her watch. It would be nine o’clock soon, and Vincent said he’d be home at nine. She didn’t believe him, but she had nothing else to do but wait.
Turning, she started for the trees that lined each side of Blackwood Lane. Her white shirt flapped around her in the quickening breeze.
------
Vincent Luciano was on top of the world.
In the past six hours, he had seized control of the Luciano crime family, while at the same time singlehandedly wiping out the entire East Dogs drug organization. And he would see to it that the Lucianos were a real crime family, now that he was in charge. The Lucianos would be taken seriously, even feared.
Vincent had the finances now to really kick things off—the duffle bag in the passenger seat contained almost one and a half million dollars, and the 150 pounds of cocaine in the trunk was worth even more. Cut correctly with inert substances, the coke would yield more than 200 pounds of finished, saleable product, with a street value of almost four million bucks.
Of course, Vincent had killed his own brother. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that yet—on some level he would miss his brother, but the man had been weak and didn’t know the first thing about respect.
Vincent would have the respect of the familia now—he’d taken down his own brother and wiped out the only major competition in the area through a series of targeted, aggressive assassinations. No one would second-guess Vincent now.
He could run things exactly as he wanted. There was no one to stand in his way.
Vincent turned the Mustang onto Blackwood Lane, roaring up the road toward his home. Vincent remembered that this stretch of road was supposed to be haunted by the ghost of a young woman. Whoever heard of a road being haunted, like a house? He’d heard about the horrible wrecks that seemed to happen with frightening regularity—bad wrecks, with people getting killed, but Vincent didn’t think the road was haunted—all the twists and turns just made the road a challenge.
He didn’t care about superstition or rumors. He didn’t care that the public works guys had trouble keeping the few streetlights working—did that mean it was haunted? Please.
Vincent remembered the warehouse—it had still been burning when that dirty cop had waved him away from the scene. Of course, now he’d need a new processing location, he thought with a smile. His brother had spent a lot of time and money building up that casino operation, but now with the one boat destroyed and the warehouse burned, Vincent didn’t think that part of the Luciano business would survive.
But Vincent would be fine. He glanced over at the duffle bag on the passenger seat, smiling.
It was a long, dark road, but he always took it fast, and tonight would be no different. He sped up, driving even faster than usual, feeling energized by tonight’s turn of events. If Shotgun and his men hadn’t shown up, guns blazing, things would have turned out so differently....
Vincent also remembered that there were a few things he needed to take care of at home.
He needed to have a little talk with his wife, teach her who was boss, once and for all. But after that, he could move
out and leave her in this house—it was cute, but Tony’s house, the official Luciano residence in downtown O’Fallon, was now vacant. He could move in and make himself at home—Vincent had always wanted to be a real gangster, a good example of what his grandmother and great-grandfather had stood for.
He took another corner fast, swerving around the sharp turn. Beyond, the road was dark—there were no streetlights for miles.
And Vincent couldn’t wait to start spending his money. He would get set up in the new house and start having parties, big parties, with lots of women, hot women in skimpy clothes....
Out of the corner of his eye, Vincent saw sudden movement along the narrow shoulder. His foot came up slightly off the gas pedal.
It was probably that small reaction that saved his life.
A ghostly figure appeared from the trees, stepping into the cones of light projected by the twin headlights on the front of his car.
His first reaction was to swerve.
The ghost woman spread her arms out, as if to grab him, a robe or a white flowing shirt spreading out around her like a ghostly halo. Her short blonde hair caught the light.
Vincent pulled hard on the wheel and swerved around the ghost, braking hard and curving around it into the other lane.
The shrieks of the wrenched tires and metal echoed loudly on the silent, darkened road.
The car swerved, but Vincent overcompensated while trying to get back into his lane and lost control of the car, swerving on the pavement. The car spun wildly and, racing backwards at over fifty miles an hour, plowed into a massive elm tree, trunk first. The car crumpled against the tree, the back half of the car folding up into sheet metal.
Chapter 58
Judy was still standing in the middle of the road, her heart paused between beats. She had made up her mind and quickly stepped out in front of the Mustang—no other car in town sounded like his.
