The sound of fist on jawbone cracked across Club Molasses.
Poor Kevin stumbled and reeled to the floor like a train off its tracks.
He slid face-first and hit the bandstand, and I ran for Doug.
“Come on!” I grunted, sitting him up like an enormous toddler, and he was almost to his feet when we both went down. Doug rolled but I was trapped under Poor Kevin, his knee on my back and his big leathery hands finding my neck again, for what I knew would be the last time. His thumbs went to my windpipe and the edges of the world were trimmed in black. Doug lifted up on a shoulder and fell, then tried again, but he was like a newborn turtle with his bruised, closed eyelids.
Dying was not okay, I told myself. There was no resolution or freedom in it. I struggled against it with every muscle and tendon in my body, and when I felt my brain emptying itself of oxygen, I thought of Lou.
No, wait-not Lou-I meant Lou’s dog, Harry.
He blasted out of the darkness like a tiny Italian ball of cold fury and chomped his needle-sharp jaws onto Poor Kevin’s butt cheek, with the freak shrieking and flailing his arms. I had no idea how the crafty little canine got inside Club Molasses-I thought the only way in and out was through the oven elevator or the Capone Door in the office-but realized then that there had to be other doors, yet to be discovered. I rolled onto my back, sucking air, and watched Poor Kevin rip Harry free and throw him softball-style into the backseat of the convertible Ferrari.
Ferrari, I thought, hacking spittle and grabbing Doug by the ankles.
I knew the keys were in the ignition.
I prayed to God there was gasoline in the tank.
I dragged Doug across the parquet floor, my feet stuttering a mile a minute as Poor Kevin sprinted toward us, and then it was all over, done, we were dead, except that a gray hairy sausage dropped from the ceiling. The rat landed on Poor Kevin’s shoulder, snarling and ripping, and he grabbed it and squeezed its guts out. As I shoved Doug into the passenger seat, the masked psycho spun the bloody rat pelt by its worm tail and screeched, “That’s it? That’s all you got? One little mouse!” right before a dozen pissed-off rodents fell on his head. Nunzio’s rats, bred to protect all things Rispoli, were fulfilling their DNA with gusto. Poor Kevin made a noise that was half six-year-old girl, half fingernails on a blackboard. I cranked the engine, and the incredible machine roared to life. Since there was nowhere to go, no way to escape the subterranean space, my simple intention had been to back over the homicidal creep until he stopped moving. But then the headlights popped on and I looked at the wall in front of the Ferrari.
A pattern of bricks formed a large but subtle C.
I suddenly realized how someone got the car down here in the first place.
There were Capone Doors, I thought. Why not Capone Garage Doors?
I leaped from the Ferrari and touched the wall-nothing-and then leaned against it-nothing-then threw a desperate shoulder and heard a creak and a rumble, and the wall lifted slowly, revealing a wide, dark tunnel. I was back in the car with inert Doug and shivering Harry, and I paused only for a glance back. Poor Kevin squeezed rats, bit rats, swatted and stomped rats, and then a dozen more of Antonio and Cleopatra’s offspring dove from the ceiling, hissing and clawing at his masked head, his raw fingers, and then another dark mass, and another, until the freak looked like a rat Christmas tree, all of it squirming and ripping, and I couldn’t tell his squealing from theirs.
I had tried to blow him up and then used his head like a speed bag, he had been attacked by a dog, and he was now being nibbled and sliced by a hundred rats, and still he fought on ferociously. I remembered Elzy’s description of her brother-nothing short of a Mack truck would stop him-and leaned heavily on the gas, fishtailing into the tunnel. It twisted and climbed with the cold smell of earth all around me until I heard wheels on concrete, and then the blast of a truck horn as I screeched onto Lower Wacker Drive. My dad’s Lincoln is a fast car but the Ferrari is a fast something else, somewhere between automobile and airplane, and I flew above the pavement. I spun onto Congress and then onto the Eisenhower, and I was gone, going nowhere in particular, just as far away from Poor Kevin as possible. I wept violently on that dark, empty stretch of expressway, expelling leftover fear and fury. I stopped and began again, and then it passed away.
That’s when my disposable phone with the unlisted number rang.
I answered, and a voice said, “Hey, it’s Tyler. Did I catch you at a bad time?”
“Where. . how did you get this number?” I said.
“I’m me, remember. . the guy who gets in touch with untouchables? Listen, what are you doing for dinner later? Have you ever been to Rome?”
“Is that a restaurant?”
“It’s a city in Italy. I’m leaving on the company jet in an hour for business and I want you to come along.”
“Italy,” I murmured, that golden place where I’d dreamed of going, so far away from all of this, except that all of this was my life. “I’d love to,” I said, “but I can’t. Tonight just. . doesn’t work. But. .”
“But what?” he said hopefully.
“But. . have a good trip.”
“I always do.”
“Tyler?” I said. “Rome. . is it beautiful? I mean, this might sound weird, but. . is it golden?”
He chuckled and said, “The food’s good,” and hung up.
I felt my heart twist into a knot, looked at the dark phone, and threw it out the window. Until I’d heard his voice, I’d been speeding on a path to no place in particular, with no plan, and no options.
Then I remembered the key he’d given me to the Bird Cage Club.
I’d almost lost my life deep below the earth.
Tonight I would sleep in the clouds, high above Chicago.
23
WATCHING THE MORNING SUN illuminate the Loop is to see miles of shadows change from gray to red to bright shining boxes, rectangles, and obelisks. Pulled puffs of cottony clouds meander past, change shape, and dissipate, and far beyond it all, Lake Michigan stretches to the horizon, first pale green, then blue black.
I stood at the window of the Bird Cage Club thirty-three stories in the air, watching the world come alive again, feeling dead inside.
I’d confronted Uncle Buddy, Detective Smelt, and even Poor Kevin, and all I had to show for it was a beaten, kicked-in friend and a small dog sleeping beside him.
I’d parked the Ferrari in the underground garage and decided to inspect it closely before hefting Doug up to the Bird Cage Club. To my surprise, someone (my dad?) had packed it with getaway provisions, as if the need to speed from middle earth at the drop of a hat was a definite possibility. There was bottled water, a first-aid kit, canned Italian delicacies, even a couple of thick Ferrari traveling blankets. I’d patched up Doug as well as I could the night before, and tried to make him comfortable. Harry walked in a small circle and then lay at his side, the first real sign of affection he’d shown anyone besides Lou. Doug rubbed the dog’s back and said, “You saved my life.”
“Barely.”
“I’m sorry, Sara Jane. I was trying to help.”
“You can’t do things like that, Doug,” I told him. “You could’ve gotten killed.”
“As beatings go, it was worse than I imagined,” he said. “But not half as bad as what I probably deserved.”
“What movie is that from?” I said.
“The movie of my life. By the way, the sidekick approves,” he said, gesturing around the room.
“Of what?”
“Our hideout,” he said, yawning hugely. “It’s perfect.”
Afterward he rolled over painfully, Harry snuggled closer, and the two of them were still asleep when I woke at dawn. I walked the perimeter of the Bird Cage Club, looking out every window, and discovered that a sturdy stone terrace surrounded the dome. One of the windows was a door. I wrapped myself in a blanket and stepped outside, and then I was inhaling the chill morning air. Thirty-three stories is a long way down
, and I was stricken by a sense of despair that made existence seem pointless and hollow. All of the running, all of the fighting and surviving, and I still didn’t know where my family was-it occurred to me again that I might never know. Slowly, I peered over the edge of the terrace, feeling the terrifying-exciting pull to jump, to abandon earth and its disappointments, when I heard Doug mumbling, “I think Harry is sick.”
I turned to his hefty, ass-kicked form in the doorway.
He was bruised and puffy, looking very much like an enormous crushed grape.
“He’s trying to throw up but seems stuck.”
We walked inside and Doug was right, Harry was hacking and retching, his jaws working and his ribs drawn tightly to his chest. “Harry,” I said, stroking his back, and he coughed once, twice, and puked out a tiny, clear plastic tube.
“What the hell is that?” Doug said, embracing poor, panting Harry.
I picked up the slimy thing-it was the length and size of a cigarette butt-and looked at it closely. “There’s something inside,” I said, twisting it until a tiny top popped off and a tightly rolled length of paper fell into my hand. I opened it carefully and read a quickly scrawled paragraph.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Beneath it, in the same handwriting, read-
Once around at noon, only on Sundays.
A wave of dizziness washed over me, my hands went numb, and the paper fluttered to the floor. I walked outside to inhale fresh air, my mind spinning but also clicking at warp speed. Doug appeared beside me, read the note, and said, “I don’t get it.”
“I think I do,” I answered, staring across the vista at Navy Pier jutting into the lake, its convention buildings, tourist boats, and Ferris wheel like a collection of children’s toys. “Is today Sunday?” I said. Doug nodded, and I thought of what Uncle Buddy said, how Harry had been hanging around my house. When I didn’t show up, the cagey little animal must’ve made his way back to the bakery, and Club Molasses, to wait for me-but how, and for how long? “I hope it’s the right Sunday,” I said.
“For what?” Doug asked anxiously.
I looked at the concern etched on his face and knew that he would do anything I asked. But just by proximity I’d drawn him nearly to the point of death, and I would not allow it to happen again. “I have to do something, and I have to do it alone. You can’t follow me or try to help me,” I said.
“Please,” he said, “I owe you.”
“I told you about the notebook. .”
“Yeah, but I want to be part of this, whatever it is.”
“Doug,” I said, summoning the ghiaccio furioso, locking eyes until his chin began to quiver. “You will not be a part of this. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, yes,” he said in a voice that was small and alone, and I saw his fear-a snippet of a movie in which Poor Kevin finished what he started with Doug in a bloody and violent way.
“The notebook,” I said, “is here, in the steel briefcase. If I don’t come back, I want you to burn it. Burn it, Doug. . every damn page, handwritten note, old photo, and unlisted phone number. It’s mine, it’s my life, and you will do as I ask.”
“Yes,” he whispered, and I looked away. Doug sighed with relief, and when he found his voice he said, “Of course I’ll do whatever you say. You’re the hero.”
“I’m no hero,” I said. “How can a victim like me be a hero?”
“According to some of the greatest movies ever made, by not becoming like the assholes who victimized you,” Doug said. “Hitting that masked creep with my computer was the right thing to do, the only thing to do, because he was trying to kill you. On the other hand, I still don’t know if what happened to Billy was justified. All I know for sure is that being smarter than an enemy is better than resorting to violence. The great hero is always more patient and much more observant. And then he. . she. . wins.” He wiped at his nose and handed me the note, saying, “Did you notice the upper-right-hand corner?” I hadn’t, and I now looked at part of a business letterhead, which read MISTER KREAMY KO- with the rest torn away. “It has to be Mister Kreamy Kone. You know, the chocolate-dipped frozen concoctions sold from the black ice cream trucks.”
“I guess I never noticed them. . I don’t eat that stuff,” I murmured, remembering what Elzy said about black ice cream trucks surrounding my house before my family disappeared.
“It’s so awesome. The truck stops, you insert money into the side like an ATM, and out pops the deliciousness. You never even see a driver. All the windows are tinted black too. Kind of weird, isn’t it?”
“Weird,” I said, thinking how the CEO of StroBisCo might have useful information about another Chicago junk-food company. Or, if it was unionized, Knuckles would have to know something-deploying strikebreakers fell under his job description. And then, of course, there was my own personal Talmud-Bible-Koran, the notebook. If Mister Kreamy Kone had even the slightest thread of a connection to the Outfit, it would be in there. Right now, however, was not the time to study; now was the time to get my mind and gut ready for what I had to do at noon.
“Is there anything else?” Doug asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “If I don’t come back, take care of Harry.”
“You have to come back,” Doug said. “We have final exams next week.”
I realized then that I hadn’t studied Italian in almost three long weeks.
I grabbed my Italian-English dictionary and looked up three words.
destino-fate
resa dei conti-reckoning
vendetta-revenge
24
By ten until noon, the cool morning sky had been replaced by a sun that shone so brightly it felt like nails being driven into my head.
There was no wind, no clouds, only light and heat.
The Technicolor blue sky looked cheap and fake, and I was tense being out in broad daylight.
I paused at the entrance to Navy Pier, watching tourists come and go carrying plastic bags full of expensive junk and eating large, sweet, colorful garbage, and then moved cautiously up the boardwalk. Twice in that short walk I was overcome by paranoia so strong that I spun in a half crouch, only to see slow-moving people with cameras and fanny packs and cotton candy. I yawned with jittery nerves, my heart beat irregularly-both signs of OD’ing on adrenaline-and I paused.
I stood inside an enormous round shadow.
I shielded my eyes and looked up.
One hundred and fifty feet in the air, the Ferris wheel crept in a slow circle.
My brother Lou is twelve, and in that time he’s probably seen his favorite movie, The Third Man, a hundred times. He has the entire film memorized, but his favorite part of all is when Holly Martins encounters his friend Harry Lime, whom he believed to be dead. Instead, it turns out that Harry faked his death and has been in hiding to escape punishment for a heinous deed. Harry doesn’t feel bad or guilty about his crime; he merely considers himself an opportunist, someone who’s made the best from a bad situation (not to mention a profit). To make the point, Harry delivers a short speech contrasting the amorality of a ruling family in Italy with that of placid Swiss democracy.
Every time the scene played, Lou would recite the monologue with him.
It began “In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. .”
Harry delivers this lesson on criminal creativity on a Ferris wheel.
Lou regards it as a genius meeting place since it’s on earth but above it, and public but also stratospherically private. He knows that I’m all too aware of his love for that seminal scene. I climbed the steps to the platform with my heart hammering my chest and saw strolling tourists, lingering tourists, tourists gaping into the sky, but no one else. And then-
“Sara Jane.”
He was behind me, and I turned to a kid who was my brother, but not.
He was snowy pale with deep circles under his eyes, his thick black hair shaved away.
He wore clothes that were not his own, jeans too big, a pale green hospital shirt beneath a coat too heavy for such a hot day.
Without another word, he turned to enter the Ferris wheel. I followed as he handed an attendant two tickets, we boarded the gondola with its open-air windows, and the great disc made its slow turn toward the sun. By that time we were holding each other tightly and I wept into his shoulder while Lou burrowed against me making low murmuring noises that were not words, but feelings. There was a faint metallic smell to him, like old batteries, and when we parted, sitting opposite of each other, we simply stared while the wheel climbed. Finally I said, “You’re alive,” and he nodded, and I asked, “Are they?”
Lou paused, then said, “Barely.”
“Lou. . where did you all go?”
“I don’t know. We were taken.”
“By who? The government?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know for sure. But I have to go back.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t lose you again.”
“I don’t have a choice. Right now, they don’t know I’m gone. But if I’m not where I’m supposed to be in an hour, they’ll probably kill Mom,” he said absently, looking down at the ground, and I saw deep red burn marks on the side of his skull.
“Lou,” I whispered, leaning forward and gently inspecting his head.
“They attach wires. I know they do it to Dad, too, or did, every day. I heard him screaming when they turned on the computer.” He turned to me, and in a quiet, blank tone he said, “They want something.”
“The notebook. Do you know about it, Lou?”
He nodded. “Our family, the Outfit, the notebook. It’s very valuable, you know. There’s something incredibly powerful in its pages, or so I’ve been told. .”
Cold Fury cf-1 Page 23
