by Brad Latham
They had passed 14th Street and the silence was beginning to get to him. In desperation, he was about to turn on the radio, just for the sake of some sound, when, suddenly, Gina spoke.
“We’re coming near Canal Street.”
He looked at her, puzzled. “What—” he began, and then stopped, as he felt the hard coolness pushing into his neck.
“Go through the Holland Tunnel,” a voice ordered from behind him. The voice was Frankie Nuzzo’s.
He said nothing, and did as instructed, wheeling right when they came to the entrance, the rain still beating down hard, the usual light of an early summer evening eliminated by the thick black thunderclouds.
He felt the gun leave his neck. “We’re comin’ to the tollbooth. Don’t do nothin’ funny. I’ll be down here behind you coverin’ you all the way,” came the voice, insolent and coarse. All the desperado flash was back in Frankie Nuzzo now, now that he had nothing to fear.
He handed over the toll and drove on, finally entering the tunnel. His eyes shot toward Gina as she was illuminated by the bright lights that bathed the tube, but she was looking straight ahead, silent again. She appeared to be off in another world.
A truck rumbled by, and Lockwood’s eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. Nothing there. Nuzzo was still crouched on the floor behind him.
They passed the New York-New Jersey border marking, its variegated colors standing out on the white-tiled wall, and finally Nuzzo spoke again. “When we get out of here, head to the Jersey swamps. You know where I mean.”
“You’re the boss, Frankie,” Lockwood shrugged, and continued to drive, passing the tunnel cops in their glassed in booth. So close, and yet…
The end of the tunnel loomed up ahead, and in a moment he switched on the lights. It was a summer storm, the sky as dark as midnight, the rain coming down in sheets. A couple of cars had pulled to the side, deciding to wait it out.
“You killed her, didn’t you, Frankie?” he said, finally.
“Shuddup an’ drive.” The gun was in his neck again, jammed there.
He shrugged, and continued on. A dancing line of white sliced through the sky, and a moment later the crash of thunder rattled the side windows of the Cord.
Again he looked to Gina, and still she was the same. Silent, forlorn-looking, her eyes never swerving, always straight ahead.
He reached the turnoff, and moved on down it, none of the traffic following him, the ramp ahead empty.
A mile, two miles, three, and still the gun’s muzzle, pressed into his neck. Only a few miles from the city, they might as well have been in the wilds of Africa. Nothing could be seen in any direction except wildly thrashing rushes and black swamp water whenever a bolt of lightning tore through the dark and illuminated the space around them.
A few more yards, and Frankie’s voice barked again. “Pull over here. Over to the side.”
He did so, braking slowly and carefully, not wanting to wind up with axles a foot deep in mud. After all, he might be driving away from here. Might.
“Okay, out of the car.” Frankie had pulled the gun away, and as he looked around, waved it at him. “C’mon! Fast!”
He pulled open the door and stepped out, Frankie following an instant later. His practised eyes sensed an opening, a small chance of beating the gangster to the punch, but he held himself in check. Dammit, he had to know what the story was. The whole story. Including how Gina figured in all this. If she did figure.
He played on the punk’s ego, making it look as if he were trying to strip it away.
“You don’t think you’re going to get away with this, do you?”
“Think it? I know it,” Nuzzo crowed, his voice so exultant that it cut through the muffled roar of the rain.
“Borowy spilled it all before he died.”
Nuzzo’s step slowed, and then picked up. “So what? What the hell they gonna do with the testimony of a dead man? What’s it anyway. My word against his.”
“He told me you were afraid of your wife. That’s why you killed her.”
“He what?” Frankie’s manhood was threatened, and it rocked him. “That’s shit, Borowy never woulda said that!”
“He said that’s why you hired him. You were afraid to kill her yourself.”
Nuzzo’s voice cracked. “Since when? Since when?”
“Everybody knows you’re yellow, Nuzzo. That’s your rep.”
“Yellow? With all the guys I put away?” Nuzzo was almost shrieking, driven nearly beyond the bounds of reason by the accusation.
It seemed the time to jam in the question. “So if you weren’t afraid of her, why’d you hire Borowy? Answer me that.”
“Why? Why should I go to jail for killing her?” The floodgates were open, and Lockwood relaxed a bit.
“So you hired Borowy to do the job.”
“Why not? Why shouldn’t I hire him?”
“It cost you a lot.”
“It cost me nothin’.”
“You figure your wife’s necklace wasn’t yours.”
“That’s right.” Nuzzo giggled a little. “She paid for her own funeral. How you like that?”
The rain came down harder even than before. He could barely see Nuzzo. “You still made a mistake with Borowy.”
“A mistake? What mistake?”
“You picked a sadist. You told him to knock you around a little. Make it look good. He really made it look good.”
“Big deal. So he got a little out of hand. A lot it’s doin’ him now.” Frankie giggled again, and shoved the gun into The Hook’s back. “Go down here,” he said, indicating an embankment. “There’s a nice quiet spot here. You’ll be layin’ in the mud a long time before anyone finds you.”
Lockwood hung in. He wanted it all, every word of it. “You were out cold when Borowy shot Maria.”
“That I admit. Yeah. He really roughed me up.”
“You never heard the shooting.”
“Naah.”
“Neither shot.”
“Uh–uh. Who cared, anyway? I was rid of her, that’s all that counted.”
“Who fired the second shot?”
“What?”
“Who fired the second shot? Maria was shot twice.”
“Whaddayou, stupid? Borowy shot her.”
“She was shot by two different guns.”
“Borowy had two hands, dummy.”
“You shot her the second time.”
“I don’ know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“You had to get the second bullet in. For revenge. You knew she was cheating on you.”
“If I knew—” Nuzzo’s voice was thick with rage. “If I knew that—I’d a killed her myself, with my bare hands.”
“You only did it for the money?”
“Why not? I was sick a her, sick a her whinin’ ways, like some kinda spoiled brat, always pickin’ at me, always wantin’ somethin’. She had it comin’. For a long time.”
“It had been building up?”
“Buildin’ up, yeah.” The pistol jabbed him again. “Okay, over here.” The Hook saw a small, weather-beaten wooden dock.
He stepped up onto it. “Something must have triggered it.”
Nuzzo joined him, and urged him forward, out to the end. “Somethin’. Yeah, somethin’ all right.” He pointed back toward the car. “ That somethin’.”
“Gina?” Lockwood felt a chill run through him.
“Yeah, Gina. She loves me. She’s always loved me. I could tell it the first time I laid eyes on her. An’ as time went on, I began to latch onto her, you know what I mean? She’s a real woman, not like Maria. She’s no whiner. An’ she’s built—”
“Gina knew you were going to kill Maria?”
“Her? Naah, she don’t know nothin’. She’s like a babe in the woods, that one. That’s why I wanted her, flatfoot. That’s why I’m gonna get her. She’s crazy over me, I know that. And now, with Maria out of the way, an’ then you—sorry I can’t invite you to the weddin’.” His g
un was flat on Lockwood’s spine. “Okay, say your prayers, pal, this is it.”
Lockwood cursed. It was too late. He’d dragged it all out of Nuzzo, but the expense was too high. There was no way he could drop Nuzzo now. He heard the click of the hammer as it was pulled back into position.
“Frankie?”
He felt the gun shift, heard Nuzzo turn, as the voice came out of the rain. A woman’s voice. Gina’s.
“What the hell’re you—” Frankie began, and then a shot rang out, and Lockwood whirled. Frankie was standing with his back to him, and as Lockwood moved forward, he saw the mobster’s mouth drop in surprise.
“Gina, what’d you—” the gangster asked, and then the gun barked again, and Frankie went down.
Lockwood knelt beside him. No chance. Each shot had been true. Already blood was gurgling out of his mouth, bubbles of air and blood heaving up from his lungs. He straightened slowly and turned toward Gina.
She was still standing there, a blurred dark shadow, the rain beating down between them, thunder rumbling in the distance.
“Thank you,” he said, and started toward her.
“Don’t move,” she cried out, training the gun on him.
“I don’t understand,” he shouted, the wind whipping at his face. “You just saved my life.”
“No. I killed Frankie,” her voice came at him, some of the words half-lost in the rushing air.
Lockwood moved a step nearer. “Don’t!” she cried, “I have to kill you, too!”
“Why? If you killed Frankie, then why me? And if me, then why Frankie?”
“I loved Frankie.” Lightning suddenly turned everything into day, and for an instant he saw her standing there, sharp-edged against the sky, her hair wild, tears mixing with the rain that streamed down her face. “I loved him.”
“Then why?” It was black again, the rain and wind tearing at him.
She ignored him, sending her words to the sky, having to get it out, having to get it all out. “I loved him so much. And he married my sister. He married Maria.”
Another bolt of lightning, and he saw the gun hadn’t wavered. It was still directed unerringly at him. “And at first I accepted it. I loved him, but he loved Maria, and that’s the way it was.”
“Gina, this is senseless. You can’t get away with it.”
“I don’t want to. Not anymore! Sure, I thought I could go on without Frankie, but all the time I kept dreaming about him, all the time, even when I was away at school, I thought about him. Boys would ask me out, and I’d tell them no. How could I have anything to do with them when Frankie was what I wanted?”
He was beginning to understand. “You heard about Maria.”
“About the cheating, yes. At first I didn’t believe it. Didn’t believe I could be that lucky. I thought Frankie would find out. That somehow he’d get the marriage ended—annulled…”
“But he never caught wise.”
“No. And it killed me, what she was doing to him, the kind of fool she was making of him. It seemed to me as if everyone was laughing at him, at my Frankie. I knew it wasn’t true, not all of it, maybe none of it, the laughing, but I was so crazy about him…”
The final pieces were beginning to fit. “You turned up the night Borowy shot Maria.”
“Yes. I went to the house. Let myself in—like always, we’re family. And I saw her lying on the floor, and she was still alive.”
“And you didn’t want her to be.”
“At first I did. At first I knelt down beside her. And then I wondered where Frankie was. Frankie! I was frantic. I was afraid they’d killed my Frankie!”
She was coming nearer to him. The lightning ripped through the sky again, and she was no longer the Gina he’d known. Her eyes were wild, animal-like.
“And I started looking for him, running around, crying. And then—and then I came to the closet, and found him. He was alive.”
“Awake?”
“No, unconscious.”
“And that’s when it came to you.”
“And that’s when it came to me. Somebody had tried to kill Maria. And she was still alive. This was my chance. Even if Frankie left Maria, the chances were the Church might not make it legal. Frankie might still be married to her. I couldn’t have him as his wife. But with her dead…”
“But your gun is a .22, not a .32.”
“The gun my parents gave me was a .32. After I shot Maria, I ran out and hid it, and then called the police from a pay phone. A few days later I dropped the gun in the river—I did it after I left you in the cafeteria. And then—I found the .22 in the house—it must’ve been one of Albert’s —and took it for myself. Just in case.”
“I loved you, Gina.”
He heard a moan come from her. “You! You don’t know what you did to me! After I’d done what I’d done for Frankie—for myself—and then you turned up! I couldn’t believe what was happening. Ever since I’d known him I’d loved Frankie, and suddenly—suddenly—I still loved him, but something else was happening.”
“You can probably get out of this, Gina. No one would question your shooting down Frankie, and your sister was already mortally wounded when you shot her. She’d have died anyway. It’s possible that technically you could get off on any murder charge.”
The storm was nearing the peak of its fury, the raindrops biting into him like gravel flung from a passing truck.
“I don’t want to get off. I loved you. I loved you so much I did what I swore I would never do—gave myself to a man before marriage! And I began to think of you—and Frankie—I was no longer thinking about Frankie—I’d killed my sister for Frankie, and now you—”
Lightning flashed again, and he saw her face, child-like, a betrayed child’s face, filled with fear and disappointment and bitter surprise. “I thought maybe—somehow—somehow—if it turned out to be you and not Frankie, that somehow I could atone—that somehow you and I—her voice faltered, and the wind swirled between them, shrieking. “And then you shot Albert! My blood!”
Blood. Blood was all with her, with all of them. And even, when it came down to it, blood wasn’t enough. Frankie. Maria. Her blood. And she’d killed them both. Hate. Her hate was thicker, even, than blood.
“So you decided to let Frankie have me.”
“Yes! Yes!”
“I don’t understand. How did you hook up with him?”
“When you left me to go to find Frankie, he was waiting for you down in the parking garage. He was going to gun you down when you got out of the car.”
“But instead he saw you with me.”
“Yes, and so he waited for you to leave. And he told me what he was there for, and I told him I’d help.”
The rain was beating at him, pummeling him, soaking all the way through his clothing. He never noticed. Instead he shouted, through the buffeting wind, “Then why? Why did you shoot Frankie?”
At first he thought the wind had suddenly intensified, and then he realized the shrill, keening wail he heard was coming from Gina. “I didn’t know he’d had Maria killed!”
Lightning split the sky again, and now her face was ravaged by emotion. “You, killing you for Albert’s sake, that would be revenge! That would be all right. My killing Maria was wrong, I know, but I thought Frankie was better than I was. That’s why I loved him! I’d never known a better man, until—” her voice broke, and she stopped.
“So you followed us down here…”
“Yes. I know you. I knew you’d try to get Frankie to confess. I wanted to hear him tell you no.”
“You’d doubted him, then.”
“No!” she shouted, and then, “… yes … you’d made me doubt him. And so I followed the two of you … and then I heard…”
“He’d killed your blood. His wife. Your sister.”
“If you hadn’t come on the scene!”
“He did it before you knew me, Gina. I had nothing to do with it. You’re young. You have a life before you. You can make it up, make things
good again. For your own sake, put that gun down.” He was only a few feet away from her, and a quick lunge…
He was halfway to her, when he saw the motion, and threw himself to the side. He felt the searing push of the bullet through him, and he went down. Thunder cracked, and the storm reached its climax, the rain crashing down as if in one solid mass. Gina’s gun went off again, and then all he could hear was the rain, and what might have been a faint splash.
He was on his feet, half-circled around where he’d last seen her standing, when the sky flashed, and he saw she was gone.
He ran toward the car, his hand gripping his side, not knowing how much of the wet he felt there was rain, and how much blood.
A sound cut through the rain. She was cranking up the engine. He quickened his pace and then cursed, as he found himself falling, his foot having slipped on the sodden ground, and then sprawled out in the mud, as the cranking sound became a roar.
Had to get there. Had to get her before she got away. He was on his feet again, guided now by the lights of the car which suddenly pierced the stygian dark.
The lights began to come toward him, and then angled away. She was turning, going back the way they’d come. He had to reach her.
The lights were red now as the coffin-nosed shape moved away from him, slowly picking up speed, about to leap forward into the gloom.
Lockwood gave it one last surge, and leapt, grabbing for the bumper, his fingers locking hard onto it, then throwing a leg over, then jamming both feet against the bumper as he inched his way up the smooth back of the convertible, palms spread out flat and hard on the metal, relying on pressure in lieu of a handhold.
Finally, he was up, feet braced against bumper, body jammed down hard on the smooth, polished surface of the Cord, praying she didn’t hit a bump as one hand searched inside a pocket.
Another moment, and he had the knife in his hand, the grooved blade wedged against his teeth, as his hand pulled away, trying to open it up, all of him vulnerable to the slightest jounce of the Cord.
And then the knife was open, and he forced it into the canvas top of the car, tearing into the side of it, through it, ripping down, slicing a hole big enough for his hand to plunge through.
