Embers & Ash

by T. M. Goeglein

  I was quiet as he turned, staring at me, searching my face.

  “Don’t cross it, Sara Jane. You’ll leave . . . too much behind. Understand?”

  “Yeah. I think I do.”

  He smiled a little as a tear rolled down his cheek, wrapped his feeble arms around me, mouth so close I could smell warm blood, and whispered, “I should have told you everything . . . my smart girl . . .”

  “Daddy.” I breathed into his shoulder. “I thought this would be the end.”

  It was.

  I knew from the way his arms stayed in place and the sudden heaviness of his body. Was my heart broken, and did I cry out, sending a howl of grief echoing across the lake? Maybe. That’s what a normal human being would’ve done. All I know for sure was that I didn’t move for a while, just held on to him as tightly as I could.

  There was so much to say, but all that mattered was, “I love you, Dad.”

  Lightning creased the sky above, followed by a distant boom. Rain began to fall in harder, colder droplets.

  And then I did my duty as the daughter of Anthony Rispoli.

  Just like the civilian world has 911, the Outfit has an emergency number of its own. I dialed, identified myself to the faceless entity who answered, and asked to be connected to the Department of Funeral Operations; I’d once read about it in chapter 7 of the notebook, “Procedimenti—Procedures.” Even at that early hour, the phone was answered on the first ring. I explained who I was, where I was, and who had died, while the deep voice answered with three terse mm-hms, and said he was on his way.

  Twenty minutes later, an unmarked van pulled up near the boardwalk.

  A pair of bald, mournful-looking thugs, a young and an old version of the same character in black suit and sunglasses, gently but quickly lifted my father onto a stretcher.

  “When do you want the service, counselor?” the younger one asked.

  “Soon. I’ll let you know.” I stared into my dad’s face, absorbing its look of peaceful escape, kissed him once, and said, “You can take him now.”

  “Condolences,” the older one said, and they hustled him away.

  I stood on the boardwalk, watching as the van curved onto Lake Shore Drive, accelerated, and disappeared.

  All the things my father never told me went with him.

  28

  I SAT ON THE COUCH AT THE BIRD CAGE CLUB across from Doug, who was still holding the bottle from which he’d tapped an aspirin into my hand. Harry was curled in my lap, trying to comfort me with his warmth. It wasn’t until returning from the lake that I fully realized how badly I’d hurt myself at Czar Bar the previous evening. My hands were red and blistered from fingertips to elbows and the air in my lungs was fiery when I breathed. I’d come close to doing something irreversible to myself. I would never do it again.

  I swallowed the pill with a quick sip of water, nullifying the electricity.

  It was just past noon, five terrible hours since I’d said good-bye to my dad.

  “Are you okay?” Doug said.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I feel like I failed him.”

  “Don’t think that way.”

  “I lost him.”

  “No,” Doug said, “you saved him. Your dad didn’t die a prisoner.” He rose, lifted my phone from the control center, and handed it to me. “It rang a couple of times while you were gone. Might be important.”

  I had two voice-mail messages and listened to the first. In a tone both officious and groveling, Knuckles reminded me that the Outfit-wide sit-down was today, and then plugged himself as boss, saying how experience and muscle always trumped youth.

  The next message was from youth himself.

  Tyler’s voice mail was urgent and alarming.

  “No, I haven’t left Chicago yet. I’m in trouble, Sara Jane,” he said quietly, trying and failing to steady his voice. “I can’t . . . it’s not safe for me to talk, but . . .”

  My hand holding the phone began to tremble.

  “I need your help. Meet me at Calo Ristorante, on Clark Street, at one thirty p.m., in the kitchen. Please, Sara Jane. Shawshank.”

  The message ended and I recited it word for word to Doug. My mind was racing faster than my heart.

  “What the hell happened?” he asked.

  I shrugged, biting a thumbnail. “I don’t know, unless,” I said, my gut curdling, “someone in the Outfit found out he was about to run. Maybe they think he’s a rat.”

  “Shit. You have to help him,” Doug said.

  “I know, I know, but time’s running out between now and the sit-down. I’ve got to make a decision, what I’m going to do about Greta.” The queasiness of uncertainty spread through me; I’d experienced it infinite times during the past six months, asking myself what would happen to my family if ——. (Fill in the awful blank.) So many ifs, so many disappointments, so much violence. I folded my thumb around my fist, knowing that the time had come to accept my fate. My existence would be one of servitude, but at least my mother and brother would be alive and free.

  I’d worried so much about crossing a line; now I had to draw one in the sand.

  Without a word, I dialed the number.

  Greta answered at Czar Bar and called me a vile name.

  In response, I told her everything about Al Capone’s vault made of gold bricks except where it was located. She was quiet for a second, breathing on the other end, and then she said, “How much all together?”

  “My estimate is four billion, give or take a million.”

  She was quiet again. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

  “I have one of the bricks. I’ll give it to you,” I said, and then spoke the plainer truth. “There’s nothing for me to lie about anymore, Greta. You won.”

  “You’ll serve me or Lou dies.”

  “I’ll serve you but Lou walks away free with my mom. If not, you can kill us all,” I said. “And then what’ll you have? No counselor. No gold.”

  “Vlad was right about you,” she said. I expected her to tell me that I was the mother of a dog, but instead she said, “You’re committed. All business. We’ll work well together.” When the agreement was in place, she instructed me to meet her at the bakery at three p.m. and to bring someone to take my mom and brother away. “The friend of yours, the one with the old car. Tell him that I owe him one for what he did to Czar Bar—”

  “I’m sure he’s sorry,” I said.

  “And that I always pay my debts,” she said coldly. “After the bakery, you’ll lead me and two of my men to ultimate power. When I’m satisfied, we’ll proceed to the sit-down where you’ll name me boss.”

  Simple and airtight in the deadliest of ways; there was no wiggle room. Greta hung up on me and I told it all to Doug.

  His ruddy face was pale, all the way to the freckles. “Jesus, Sara Jane, you just gave yourself to her. She’ll own you.”

  I shook my head. “She’ll own part of me, the Outfit part. The other part, the one that loves my family and my friend, will be locked away inside of me,” I said. “I guess it’s what Rispolis do.”

  He watched me, unblinking. “Clock’s ticking,” he said quietly.

  “Has been since the minute my family disappeared,” I said, rising to meet Tyler. “Will you do me a favor? While I’m gone, make sure the Cadillac still runs?”

  He nodded. “Let’s hope. It looked shot to pieces when we got back here last night.”

  I went to my room and changed into a Cubs T-shirt, faded jeans, and Chuck Taylors. I twisted my hair into a ponytail while pointedly not looking at the mattress where my dad had slept. Doug was waiting by the elevator, and as I climbed on, he offered me the lighter. I shook my head. “Not this time. Good luck and I aren’t on speaking terms.”

  “Don’t take it for luck,” he said, folding it into my hand. “Take it becaus
e you never know when you’ll need to set something on fire.”

  • • •

  I rode the Brown Line north, transferred once, and was soon walking up Clark Street in the Andersonville neighborhood; my house on Balmoral Avenue was only blocks away. I’d grown up on this street, buying back-to-school footwear at old-timey Alamo Shoes, feasting on ice cream at George’s, eating dinner with my family at Calo Ristorante; what I hadn’t known until I’d read the notebook was the restaurant’s status as a reliable sit-down location for the Outfit. I passed beneath the striped canopy at 1:29 p.m. and pushed through the door. The place was empty except for a scattering of employees prepping for the dinner crowd. The bartender stood peeling a lemon, a shock of white hair bent over his work as he carved the rind into yellow curlicues. “Help you?” he drawled.

  “The kitchen . . . ?”

  He looked up and his face changed. “Oh, counselor. Straight back, no detours,” he said, quickly returning to his task.

  I passed waiters polishing glasses and folding linen napkins until I reached a set of double doors. When I pushed through, the restaurant’s owner—thick, bald, imposing—glanced at me and clapped his hands. Without a word, line cooks and dishwashers walked silently from sudsy sinks, boiling pots, and sizzling grills. Everything in the large room was stainless steel—refrigerators, freezers, prep tables—except for the tiled walls. The owner smiled nervously, saying, “It’s all yours,” and shut the doors carefully behind him.

  “Hey,” Tyler said, stepping around a corner, handsome as always, opening his arms for a hug. Despite the urgency of the meeting, his embrace calmed me. “I was scared you wouldn’t make it,” he said over my shoulder.

  I stood back, facing him. “You should be gone by now.”

  He nodded. “I know, but listen, I own a couple of cops. For a few hundred bucks a month they pass me information so, you know, I always have a leg up.”

  “Go on.”

  “Seems they were called to North Avenue last night and found a bunch of dead Russian mobsters all over the street. Well, not all dead,” he said. “One was still alive, barely, when the police arrived. He was babbling about the Outfit, and you.”

  My face was blank but my guts were churning. “So?” was all I could muster.

  “So I had the cops bring him to me. Guy suddenly clammed up, refused to talk. But with a Russian translator and some sodium Pentothal . . .”

  “Sodium Pentothal?”

  “I learned everything,” he said slyly, green eyes gleaming. “From Juan Kone to Greta Kushchenko.”

  Now I was unable to muster anything, not a word, feeling my blood freeze.

  “What a story! Your dad was taken by a bunch of anorexic freaks with red eyes? So an evil genius could infiltrate his brain?” he cried, crossing his arms. “It sounded like bullshit to me, and I know it’s true!”

  “You said—you needed my help,” I mumbled, confused.

  “I do. But just in case you refuse,” he said, turning, rummaging in his pocket, and spinning around with a thousand-watt smile. “Ta-da!”

  “Oh . . . my god,” I whispered at the pair of crimson goggles he’d strapped to his face.

  And then I saw the snub-nosed .38 aimed at me.

  “I know, right?” he said smugly, tapping the gun to the goggles. “The Russian told me all about these babies. So yeah, you’re going to name me boss.”

  It was like listening to someone I knew and had never met, both at once. My mouth was dry when I said, “You told me you wished the Outfit didn’t exist. That in a perfect world you’d walk away from it. We—you hate it.”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “That’s why I’m taking this opportunity to screw it over, just like it did to my dad. To survive, you have to use hatred like fuel.” His smile turned condescending, as if he pitied me. “How many times have I said it? Perfect or not, this is the world we live in. We may as well take it for all it’s worth.”

  The facts faced me now with perfect teeth and a killer grin—he was tall, handsome, and as rotten to the core as any pimp or drug dealer. His title didn’t make him better than the rank and file; it only elevated him to where the mud couldn’t spatter his imported Italian shoes. On the one hand it was like being angry at a shark for following its nature. But on the other—the one that had once held mine while he told me how it felt to lose his parents in an airplane accident—it was pure betrayal.

  “Helping each other take the Outfit for all it’s worth,” I said. “That’s what you meant about watching each other’s backs.”

  “Hey, neither of us is going to make a dime if someone sticks a knife in yours or mine,” he said. “I’m your Whispering Smith, and you helped me with the smash-and-grab guy. Thanks for that, by the way. I fenced the gems and made a tidy little profit.”

  “Profit? You mean you sold that stuff and settled his operating tax with the money, right?” I said, thinking of how I’d used cold fury to make the guy stand aside while Tyler took a small fortune from his stash house, designated for Outfit coffers.

  “Some of it.” He shrugged. “The guy had more than he needed, so I helped myself. You know the rule. Money is money. You take it where you can get it, always.”

  I saw then what a fool I’d been.

  He’d used me to pull a cruddy little robbery.

  That I could’ve trusted him about—anything—was suddenly ludicrous.

  “Look, that heist was small-time,” Tyler said. “When I’m in charge, new Outfit rule, enforced through cold fury, the boss gets twenty-five, no, fifty percent of revenue generated by the rank and file. You and I will clean up!”

  “You and I?”

  “Well, yeah. Business comes first, but you know I like you, Sara Jane. More than like,” he said. “Face it, we belong together.”

  All I could do was stare, disbelief and rage coursing through me. “So I’m going to be, what, your combination girlfriend and counselor-at-large? Like the prom king and queen of organized crime?”

  “In time, you’ll see that I did this for both of us,” he nearly purred in his charming way that now seemed creepy. “I need you, and even more, you need me.”

  “I’m about to say something you probably don’t hear from women too often,” I said, gritting my teeth. “No.”

  “No what?” he said, stepping closer without lowering the gun.

  “No to all of it. If I don’t name Greta boss, something terrible will happen to my mom and brother. You probably know that.”

  “She has them.” He shrugged. “But you did so much damage to the Russians, I can wipe out them and her, and free your family. Don’t you see how perfect this is? It’s like my dad said, once I’m boss, you really can neutralize all of my—our—enemies inside the Outfit, too! Trust me.”

  I smirked once myself. “I’m not naming you boss, Tyler. What are you going to do? Shoot me? Where would that leave you?”

  He laughed then, loud and in my face. “Me? Where would it leave you?” he brayed. “In a landfill, for starters. My guys will bundle your dead ass out of here and I’ll show up at the sit-down but hey, where’s the counselor-at-large? Maybe she defected, like her dad, or—no, much better! She turned rat, went to the Feds!” He moved toward me again, so close I could smell his lemony cologne. “I’ll sell it like a pro, have my cops fake documentation proving you’re a turncoat, whatever. A boss will still have to be chosen, whether or not the counselor is there to do it. Now let me think, if it’s between crusty old Muscle and fresh young Money, I wonder who the rank and file will choose?”

  There was nothing for me to say. Money trumped everything.

  “One pair of goggles and the world turns toward me. Cold fury is good for one thing only—settling disputes so the rank and file can keep earning.” He chuckled. “It sure didn’t help you save your family.”

  He’s right, I thought.

  T
yler said, “From now until the sit-down . . .”

  Neither did the electricity.

  “You’re going to stay here with me.”

  Even ultimate power was useless, so . . .

  “It’s only a couple hours,” he said, glancing at his watch.

  Time froze as I watched his head turn toward his wrist, taking his eyes from me, and I thought, All that remains is a left hook.

  Time restarted. Tyler said, “We have to—” and his words were lost to my fist cracking into his perfectly formed jaw. He fell against a prep table and I punched him again, hard against the other side of his head as he reeled but didn’t fall, didn’t drop the gun, so I grabbed his wrist and hit it once, twice, three times on a counter until the .38 clattered away. I reached for the goggles but he staggered upright, pushed me back, and threw a wild roundhouse that grazed my shoulder, another that missed by a mile, and lost his balance. I yanked him into a choking headlock, ripped the goggles free, crushed them underfoot, and dragged him over to the red-hot grill.

  Holding his head inches above it, I said, “You’ve got a choice, handsome. Stop fighting or start wearing a bag over your head.”

  “Fug-oo . . . bish!” he gasped.

  “Have it your way,” I said, pushing him closer, his sweat and tears popping and sputtering on the grill.

  “O-a, o-a! Please!” he said, high-pitched and desperate.

  I let him go and grabbed a knife from a cutting board in one motion, and when he turned, I put the tip of the blade to his throat. Blinking once, I said, “Look at me,” and saw his deepest fear.

  Tyler gasped, biting his lips, unable to look away.

  I’d used cold fury on him once before, to make him turn our jet to Rome back to Chicago, and then—just for an instant—I’d seen him watching from the ground as his parents died in a fiery plane crash. I didn’t understand at the time that it was a terrible memory rather than a fear, but I’d blinked it away so quickly. Now, watching further into the scene, I saw young Tyler’s eyes widen as the plane exploded, and felt what he felt—first shock and then, slowly, a rising, secret pleasure—as his lips curled into a smile. Quietly, in a whisper, he said, “Tyler Strozzini, VP of Money.”