“It was just business. Mostly,” I whispered, looking at the framed portraits lining the wall—the president, the mayor of Chicago, a painting of old Casimir Fepinsky himself on horseback wearing a Polish military uniform and thick sideburns—and seeing not one woman among them. I sighed and glanced at Mr. Novak’s secretary, catching her eye as she looked away, and knew she’d been inspecting me over her computer.
“Very good!” Mr. Novak said, standing in his office doorway. “Right on time for our powwow! Come in, Douglas . . . Sally Jane.”
I considered correcting him, shrugged it off, and followed him inside with Doug behind me.
Mr. Novak edged around his desk, sat with his stubby legs crossed, and cradled his fingers behind his head. “Welcome to my humble abode,” he said. “My casa is your casa.” I looked around the office crowded with memorabilia—little figurines with their thumbs up, photos of Mr. Novak posing with students making the sign, even a framed Cubs jersey stitched with Thumbs-Up Novak. “What you see here is a lifetime in education,” he said proudly, as his phone buzzed. He leaned forward, lifted it from the cradle, and said, “Novak here!” He listened for a moment and a smile creased his chubby cheeks. He spun around, his back to us, and spoke in a low tone, saying, “Of course I’m happy you called. Oh, don’t be like that . . . Yes . . . Yes, Bootsie . . .”
Doug turned to me and mouthed, Bootsie?
“. . . Me too. Until then,” Mr. Novak murmured, then he turned and replaced the phone. He straightened his tie, a loud, tropical number adorned with palm trees and coconuts, and said, “Now then. Why are we meeting today?”
“Because you told us to be here?” I said.
Mr. Novak shook his head. “It’s because . . . ,” he said, lifting his eyebrows, making them dance, “Fep Prep is . . . ?”
Doug shrugged slowly and said, “Us?”
“Pre-cisely!” Mr. Novak said, slapping the desk. “Fep Prep is us. And making sure it’s the best school in Chicago is the responsibility of every educator and student here.” He opened a folder, studied its contents, and moved his gaze to me. “Every student . . . even a serial nonparticipant like yourself. Your attendance record has been a little spotty, and to date, you have not one team, charity, or academic competition.”
“I founded the Classic Movie Club,” I said feebly.
He shot me a thumbs-up. “Kudos for that. It’s a great start. But otherwise, you’ve been largely invisible during your time at Fep Prep.”
“I’m busy . . . outside of school,” I said, uttering the mother of all understatements.
“We all have lives beyond these hallowed halls, my dear, but that’s no excuse,” he said. “If it will help, I’d be happy to call your parents and talk about your schedule.”
“No, thank you,” I answered, as calmly as possible, thinking of a phone ringing in our empty house on Balmoral Avenue. With all my might, I wished he would shift his focus to Doug, who’d become small and unnoticeable in the classic please-don’t-let-him-call-on-me posture. “I’ll do more,” I said, “participate more.”
This time it was a double thumbs-up. “Wunderbar! Now, for the good of Fep Prep, you and your partner will lead a group of freshmen on a field trip to the Skydeck atop the Willis—or as it was called in my day, Sears—Tower. You’ll present a short talk to them about the history of the building, and then you’ll mingle with your classmates. That’s how mentoring is born! How does that sound?”
“Awesome,” I said, forcing a smile of my own.
“Super awesome!” he replied. “The view from a hundred and three stories is a wowzer. I’ll accompany you and the group one week from today. And I expect you to be fully prepared, yes?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“I’ll make a participant out of you yet, Sally Jane! Today the Willis Tower, tomorrow, glee club! Becau-u-u-se . . ,” he said playfully, drawing out the syllables.
I stared at him, trying to read his mind.
“Fep Prep is us,” Doug said robotically.
Mr. Novak slapped his desk. “You guys rock! Now get the heck out of here!”
We did, without hesitation, hurrying from the office, down the hallway, and outside. The meeting had lasted long enough for most kids to have vacated the school yard, with only a few stragglers loitering on the sidewalk. I heard the lighter snap and smelled smoke as Doug stood next to me, lighting a cigarette. “I’ll tell you something about that guy”—he coughed—“he’s got enough school spirit to choke a pig.”
“I don’t need it, Doug. More scrutiny at school, blowing valuable time on field trips,” I said. “You know what I really need?”
“What?”
“A whole new life.” I sighed.
“I can’t give you that. No one can,” he said, holding up the pharaoh key chain. “But a little diversion wouldn’t hurt.”
14
I DROVE CAUTIOUSLY TOWARD CLARK STREET, wary of a garbage truck that seemed to be tracking us—turning when I did, grinding gears ominously, staying a little too close behind—but then it turned off into an alley and disappeared.
Nonetheless, I charted a circuitous course to our destination.
To be honest, I’d nearly forgotten about Great-Grandpa Nunzio’s stash house.
I resisted going; it fell into the category of why-am-I-doing-this-when-my-family’s-missing? Not to mention this was the day of the week when I made sure my house on Balmoral Avenue was secure. But I gave in when Doug wisely reminded me that investigating my family’s past often yielded clues to the present.
A half an hour later, I stopped outside Reebie Storage.
We climbed from the Lincoln and I made sure to pay the meter. The Chicago parking authority was as relentless as the Outfit when it came to collection.
Approaching the entrance, seeing the ornate twin Ramseses guarding the door, I marveled again at the web of duplicity constructed by my family. I’d passed the building a million times in my life, never remotely suspecting that it harbored Rispoli secrets. Without a word, Doug and I pushed through the door. The clerk was an elderly guy, frail and doddering, in a Reebie T-shirt. He lifted his glasses and scratched at the back of his head while turning the skeleton key in shaky fingers. “Huh. Wouldja look at that? Old one, ain’t it?”
“I suppose so,” Doug said impatiently. “Look, how long is this—”
“Oopsy,” the clerk said as the key slipped from his hand, clattering to the floor. He bent beneath the counter, saying, “Gosh darn it all . . . clumsy me . . .”
Doug leaned toward me, muttering, “This is exactly why I say senior citizens shouldn’t have driver’s licenses,” and turned back to an Uzi submachine gun aimed at his—our—faces.
The old guy squinting down the barrel suddenly didn’t seem so frail. He held the gun as steady as a rock and his voice lost its quiver. “Where’d you little bastards get that key?” he said. “You got three seconds to spill before I blow your brains out the back of your heads. One . . .”
“He means it,” another guy said, appearing out of nowhere and leaning casually on the counter next to the gun-toting grandpa. He was twenty, maybe younger, with little visible skin that wasn’t covered in tattoos. In contrast to the Russians’ crude ink on flesh, his were precise, artistic images, burned with care. I habitually search strangers’ faces for a twitch or flicker that could reveal hidden knowledge or imminent violence, and what I saw in Tat-boy’s face was dead seriousness. He pointed behind us. “You have no idea how many times I’ve had to scrub that wall. It’s not the blood so much as the skull bits.”
“Two . . . ,” the old guy said between clenched teeth.
“Skull . . . bits,” Doug gasped, sucking air, consumed by a full-body tremble.
I glanced at Tat-boy’s forearm, where a familiar scarred visage leered up at me—Al Capone seared in deep lines of black and gray. Other faces covered other parts of his bod
y and I nodded at them, saying, “Frank Nitti. Momo, Giancana.” Blinking once, feeling the blue flame flicker and leap, I grabbed his gaze. “Where’s Tony Accardo?”
“On . . . my back,” Tat-boy said quietly. His eyes widened as we both stared at the shared image of his rising internal terror—his own skull shattered and stuck to the stained wall. His hand groped for the Uzi, clumsily pushing the barrel down. “You’re—you’re her,” he stammered, chewing back tears.
“Who?!” the old man barked.
“Counselor-at-large,” I said, blinking, and freeing Tat-boy, who leaned on the counter, sucking air. “Sara Jane Rispoli.”
“Oh. Uh-oh,” the old man said, dropping the gun on the counter. “Crap,” he added by way of apology, removing a hunting knife from the small of his back and throwing it down, too. “Please excuse me, Miss Rispoli . . . counselor!” He coughed. “Ray here will be happy to take you to unit—?”
“You have the key,” I said.
“Oh . . . right!” he said, hastily dropping Ramses into my hand. “Ray! Take ’em!”
“Follow me,” Tat-boy wheezed, knocking a fist against his chest, leading us down a hallway. He opened a door marked Employees Only and we stepped inside to a dripping slop sink, the air ripe with the smell of bleach and floor wax. Mops stood in a bucket, jugs of cleaning solution shared space on a shelf with paper towels and garbage bags, and a stained janitor’s uniform hung from a hook. He locked the door and his eyes moved to Doug. “May I speak freely?” he asked. I nodded and he said, “Ray Capezio Jr. Fourth-generation Outfit . . . fourth-generation Reebie man. We’ve been guarding the big boys’ stashes since forever. Sorry about granddad. The old man loves his job.”
“Clearly,” Doug said, pulling a hand over his sweat-soaked forehead.
“Why didn’t you use the Capone Door in the alley?”
Clueless, I faked it as usual, saying, “I . . . wanted to make sure you guys were on your toes, considering the Russians. Look, we’re in a hurry—”
“Oh. Sure,” he replied, giving the mop handle a pull. The room shuddered and fell. The sink kept dripping and the janitor’s uniform swayed on its hook as the disguised elevator carried us down. Ray cleared his throat and said, “Speaking of the war, we’ve heard rumors about Lucky’s . . . fitness, I guess is the word. I was just wondering . . .”
I stared at him until he shut up. “Rumors are a no-no, Ray.”
“Right. Rumors, gossip, all that crap is for broads.” He heard his own words and blanched. “Just not a broad like you . . . I mean, a chick like you! A lady like you!”
“Try person,” I said as the closet came to a stop. “The more you think of women as people, the easier it gets.”
“I’ll try that,” he said weakly, opening the door to a long hallway covered in glazed brick. Its walls were lined with brass doors similar to Al Capone’s vault, and I knew I was seeing Joe Little’s handiwork. “Your key is what . . . R-nineteen-twenty-nine?”
“Ninety-two-ninety-one-R,” I corrected him.
“You’re reading it forward,” he mumbled, looking at doors. “It’s the reverse, of course. R for Rispoli and then the year your family rented the space. Everybody does that if they haven’t been here in a while. Even your pop did it.”
“Pop . . . my dad?”
“Had to be a year ago. He was here looking for the unit when I came down to oil the door hinges. I remember, it was right after the Hawks won the Stanley Cup.” Politely, he added, “How’s he doing by the way? Pretty sick, huh?”
“Yeah. Pretty sick,” I said quietly. What my dad had been doing here was a question that couldn’t be asked without seeming even more clueless, but another had been solved—Nunzio had been stashing stuff since 1929. As our footsteps echoed around the hallway, I glanced at each unit and said, “What’s inside all of these?”
“No idea. Never been in any of them, and never will. One thing about the Outfit—make the mistake of sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong and say good-bye to that poor old nose. Here we are. R-nineteen-twenty-nine,” he said, stopping outside the last door. After a polite smile, he turned and left.
I looked at the skeleton key in my hand. A quick breath filled my lungs as I turned the lock and stepped inside to the perfume of mildew and gasoline.
“Light switch,” Doug said, flipping it.
First a buzz and then yellow illumination erased the darkness. It was more a garage than a storage room, with high ceilings, a loading dock at the far end, and something large with four wheels beneath a tarp. The rest of the space was empty. We moved toward the hulking form, silently inspecting it, and then unrolled the cloth, flap over flap. A slab of tarnished chrome revealed itself, nearly the same height as my shoulders, topped by a hood ornament of a tiny, shiny lady with wings, about to take flight. Large glass headlights gaped like the eyes of a great steel insect, bisected by a metal plate bearing the engine size—V-8. The hood’s long nose was the same gunmetal gray as a great white shark, lined with air vents like vertical gills. Its wide fenders were rolling steel waves above whitewall tires with mesh covers; extra wheels were secured to the car’s body by heavy straps. We walked around it slowly, meeting and passing at the rear where a leather trunk sat above the back bumper, and then paused to stare at each other through opposing front-seat windows. “Why the hell am I always finding cars?” I said.
Carefully, Doug opened the driver’s-side door, stepped onto the running board, and lifted himself into a springy leather seat. “Manual gearshift, on the floor, just like my mom’s old Mercedes, except this bad boy is a lot older.”
I climbed into the passenger side, opened the glove box, removed a perfectly preserved booklet, and read, “‘Cadillac LaSalle Shop Manual, 1929.’ Same year Great-Grandpa Nunzio stashed it down here.”
Staring at the instrument panel, Doug said, “Fuel gauge. Speedometer. Battery gauge. Hey, look at that, a radio. Who knew cars had radios back then?”
“I wonder why he stashed it?”
“There’s a key in the ignition,” Doug said. “Is it possible . . . ?”
I shrugged, looking around at the small rear glass window and the long plush bench seat with three boxes on it—a large cardboard one marked Ace Uniform Supply, a medium-sized wooden crate, and a smaller box so familiar that it drew me into the backseat. All three were ancient. The cardboard had gone soft and the crate’s wood was spongy. I knelt before the small one, a cake box, whispering the words on its faded cover: “Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries.” I opened it to rows of cash. The currency was larger and greener than it is now, some of it smudged with muddy brown fingerprints, like—old blood? Fifty bound sheaves of hundred-dollar bills, each marked with the total value of a thousand dollars, were topped by a handwritten note:
NR,
Happy Valentine’s Day. Hope this satisfies your sweet tooth.
C
I felt little hairs rise on my neck as I set it aside and opened the Ace Uniform Supply box. Inside, half eaten by mold, were two carefully folded blue wool Chicago police officer uniforms, complete with badges tarnished by age. “Valentine’s Day,” I murmured, thinking of blazing tommy guns and bodies sliced by bullets. Seconds later an explosive roar filled the room. Diving for cover, I threw myself to the floor of the car, feeling it rumble beneath me, smelling oily exhaust.
Doug grinned sheepishly from the front seat. “So . . . it starts.” He got out, looked beneath the car, and climbed back behind the wheel. “It’s connected to one of those electrical chargers that keeps the battery alive for, like, years,” he said. “Your dad must have kept it running. We could probably drive it right out of here.”
“If so,” I said quietly, “it would be for the first time since 1929.”
Doug reached for the key and cut the engine. “How do you know?”
I lifted one of the uniforms, showing him the badge. “Right down the str
eet, like, two blocks from here, at a place called SMC Cartage Company, Capone’s guys killed seven rival gang members, execution style. Lined them up against a wall and cut them to ribbons with tommy guns on February 14, 1929. The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre.”
“Same year Nunzio stashed the Cadillac. Same year as the Cadillac,” Doug said.
“Witnesses heard gunfire, called the cops, and then were surprised to see two cops running away from the scene and fleeing in a Cadillac instead of a police car.”
“That means—”
“They were the killers.”
“A pair of Outfit guys disguised as police,” Doug said. “Pretended to be the law and assassinated the other gang. Sick and brilliant.”
“The real cops couldn’t figure out how the fake cops and the Cadillac disappeared without a trace,” I said, shoving the pastry box full of cash at Doug. “Here’s the answer. My great-grandpa gave the killers a place to hide a few blocks away. The car has been here ever since. Al Capone was grateful . . . he filled one of my family’s pastry boxes with a fifty-thousand-dollar thank-you to Nunzio. It’s blood money, literally.”
“So many secrets in your family,” Doug said, staring around the old car, his gaze stopping on the crate. He pulled on a slat, snapping it off like a brittle bone. “Oops,” he said, “the wood’s rotten,” and he went silent, reached inside, and came up with a brown bottle. It was marked with the image of a maple leaf and MADE FROM 100 PERCENT CANADIAN MOLASSES. “A dozen bottles.” He grunted, pulling a cork and taking a sniff as his nose climbed up his face. “Damn! You know what this is?”
“Something tells me it’s not for pancakes.”
“Bootleg whiskey,” he said, “probably made from Nunzio’s own molasses. It’s hundred-proof alcohol . . . this stuff could peel paint.” He licked his lips and took a drink.
“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “What are you doing?”
He gasped for air and croaked, “Smooth . . .”
“Doug, seriously!”
Embers & Ash Page 11
