The Secret Life of Damian Spinelli

by Carolyn Hennesy

  A woman, standing on the edge of the roof of the old Bijou flicker house. Didn’t seem crazy at all, Mac said later, just desperate. Husband had been killed in the service. Parents gone. Two kids, no job . . . and the landlord was throwing her out of her cold-water walk-up. Even worse, turns out Mac had dated her a while back . . . really liked her, too. Now he was trying to save her life.

  He was on top of the movie house for a good four hours . . . thought he was gettin’ through. Then the dame just turned a couple of sad eyes on Mac Scorpio and walked off the edge.

  No one saw Mac for a few weeks after that, except the take-out delivery guys and a couple of bartenders. Then one day he walks into the Port Charles Police Department and sits down at his desk. Nobody cracks wise . . . nobody says nothin’. And that’s the way it’s been. Except I happen to know, because I gotta friend at the First National Bank of Port Charles, that Mac Scorpio has been taking care of that woman’s kids for the past fifteen years. A real St. Nick . . . or St. something . . . He’s tops in my book.

  “You’re our last hope, Jackal,” Mac said.

  “Nobody comes around here no more,” I said, pulling my collar higher. “How’d you get wise?”

  “Michael Corinthos was giving some girl a tour of Daddy’s waterfront holdings,” Mac answered. “Kids decided to see the view from the top of the tank like in the old days. This guy ran ’em off. Poor girl nearly fell off the metal stairs. As Michael was leaving, he heard the guy saying something about how Michael should come back in an hour . . . it would all be over by then. How he’d be just a memory . . . but a good-looking one. Of course, Michael got scared and called us . . . because he knows the jumper.”

  “Knows him?”

  “Yep,” Mac said. “Couldn’t mistake the accent. It’s his ex–step daddy . . . or are he and Carly still married? I’m never sure with those two.”

  “You mean it’s . . . ?” I said looking up.

  “Yeah . . . it’s Jax.”

  My first step on the stairs told me I was in trouble. My Buster Browns were gonna cause quite a hubbub as they hit the metal. Jax would know someone was on their way up . . . no telling what that would do to the man. A man can do desperate things when he’s backed into a corner, especially if it’s a corner on a five-by-five platform two hundred feet high.

  I took off my zapatos and started the hike.

  Five minutes later, I was leaning hard against the tank, like a bear scratching an itch. Only a few more steps and I’d be on the top. I ducked down as long as I could, then I craned my head for a peek.

  Jax was standing with his back to me, staring at the harbor. Poor fool didn’t even know I was there.

  “I knew they’d send you, Jackal.”

  Okay, so I was wrong.

  “Don’t know what you’re talkin’ ’bout,” I said. “Came up for the view.”

  “Top of the world, Jackal. Top of the world.”

  “Close enough,” I said, putting on my shoes. “Yeah, real pretty. Now what say we head down, grab a coupla steaks, coupla redheads, and soak the whole mess in a coupla gimlets?”

  “Not this time, Spinelli,” Jax said, finally turning to look at me. “Game’s over.”

  “Whaddya talking about?” I said. “I don’t see no game up here. You want a game? I know a back-alley craps game that’ll give you six-to-one. Or we could cab it to Saratoga and play with the ponies . . .”

  “Stop it, Jackal. It’s no good . . . not anymore. I’m ending it all now.”

  “Cut the coleslaw and give me the straight beef.”

  Jax looked at me real hard.

  “What?” I said.

  “What do you mean ‘what’?” he asked, as if I should know.

  “Whaaat?” I was startin’ to get steamed. “Toss out the egg salad, Chester, it’s old news. What gives!?”

  He still just stared, but harder. I was gonna push him over the side myself.

  “Don’t you see it!?” he finally yelled.

  “What?” I yelled right back. “What am I looking for? What’s got you all nutso?”

  “Right here!”

  And Jax moved his hand so fast, I thought he was gonna deck himself right in his noggin. Suddenly, like some kind of spooky mechanical toy, he’s pointing at his head, just above his right ear. I bent in for a look. Nice ear . . . like a pink kidney bean.

  “You get your ears pierced?”

  “NO! Right here!”

  “I’m not seein’ nothin’ except skin and hair,” I said.

  And then, outta the blue, he gets all teary-eyed.

  “What color is the hair?” he said.

  “Brown? Sandy blond, maybe? Clairol #57 if I’m guessin’ right? Am I right?”

  “Look closer, damn you!”

  “Hey, stop with the lip. Ain’t no call to be talkin’ . . . wait. Wait a minute. What’s that?”

  The sun was dropping into the sea and the last little glint caught a single hair. A single, pure white hair.

  “THAT?” I said, nearly falling over my feet as I pushed my fedora back on my head. “You’re pullin’ my leg, but good. That’s what’s got you loco? A gray hair?”

  “It’s white! It’s skipped gray entirely. And it’s only the beginning, Spinelli. More are on their way. It’s finally happening. I’m getting old. And I know why . . .”

  “What do you mean, ‘why’?” I said, getting a little concerned now. “Happens to everyone, Jax.”

  “You don’t understand. It was never supposed to happen to me. Everybody was gonna get pruny around me, but I was gonna outlast them all. This face was gonna stay young and gorgeous forever!”

  “You just crossed the line, Barrymore,” I said gently. “Now you got me worried for real.”

  “It was the deal, Spinelli. The deal my father made with . . . I don’t know . . . I just know the terms. My father John had a hand of five playing cards that never left his person. They were always on him somewhere. Aces and eights. As long as my father had the cards . . . his lucky hand . . . Wild Bill’s hand . . . he was fine. Healthy, strong as an ox, and a handsome devil. But Sam . . .”

  “Sam?” I cut in. “McCall . . . my partner?”

  “Long before you showed up in Port Charles,” Jax went on, “Sam stole one of the cards. I can’t even remember why anymore. She got her hands on an eight . . . a lousy eight . . . and my father went downhill. In no time, he was in the hospital. I didn’t think it was anything but superstition at the time; I didn’t believe, you hear me? I just knew it mattered to my father! I managed to get the card away from Sam . . . I rushed to the hospital, but . . . but . . .”

  I’m not comfortable with grown men crying . . . unless it’s me . . . but his story had me riveted, so I got past wantin’ to smack him.

  “I showed my father the card . . . held it right under his nose, you understand!? But it was too late. With his last gasp, he looked me in the eye and said he was passing the secret of the hand to me. Told me where to find the other cards and that I should always keep them close. They’d keep me young and handsome.”

  “Aw, come on. This is voodoo talk, Jax! This is chicken bones and . . . and . . . stickin’ pins in little dolls! You can’t tell me you believed . . .”

  “And sexy. And virile.”

  “Yeah, yeah . . . I got it! But this is candles and sand circles and . . .” I said, getting the urge to shove him off the tank again.

  “A lust machine.”

  “All right . . . I savvy! Don’t need to hear this part.”

  “Incredibly well endowed. Able to go for hours . . .”

  “Aces and eights, you say?”

  “Spinelli . . . how old do you think I am?”

  Now, if this had been a dame I was talking to, I knew how to wise up, and fast. Maxie had pulled this on me once. Cost me two hundred bucks in silk, lace, and bonbons. And the tears! Cripes, I didn’t know a person could make that much salt water. These days, if Maxie even started getting that look in her eye like she was gonn
a ask me how old she looked or if she looked fat or some other female nonsense, I gave one right on her kisser, pulled out a Franklin and told her to go buy herself something pretty. But this was Jax . . . askin’ a skirt question.

  “I don’t know, Jax,” I said. “Maybe thirty-five, thirty-eight at the outside?”

  A smile started movin’ across his face real slow, like a snot-nose kid crossing the gym floor to ask a girl to dance.

  “I’m sixty-seven and a half.”

  It was like someone stopped my heart for a second. I hadn’t realized the boy was this far gone.

  “Yeah,” I said, “and I’m the Pope.”

  “Your Eminence,” Jax said, bowing slightly.

  “Cut the corn!” I yelled, as the moon started to rise over the city.

  “I’m not kidding, Jackal,” Jax said, his voice real low. “My father was one hundred and seven when he died. And he’d still be alive if he’d had his lucky hand. When he lost the card, he went fast . . . and it was painful. I don’t want to go like that!”

  He moved toward the edge of the platform.

  “I want to go in the blink of an eye, and leave a good-looking corpse.”

  “You take that next step and they won’t find enough of you to leave a good-looking anything. What they do find, they’ll have to stitch together, and that won’t be pretty.”

  “Just let me get it over with.”

  “Why don’t we go down and talk this whole thing over with . . .”

  I stopped short. Real short. Maybe it was the night air or the altitude playing tricks with my head, maybe it was this guy’s belief that his fate lay in one hand of cards . . . or maybe I just hadn’t seen it before, but there was a second white hair growin’ close to the first. I shook it off.

  “They got doctors, see? Real good ones . . . at Shadybrook . . .”

  “I didn’t expect you to believe me. Look, maybe it’s better this way. I won’t outlive any wives and won’t look younger than the bridegroom when I walk Josslyn down the aisle. I appreciate you trying to help . . . Now step aside, Spinelli.”

  Right in front of my peepers, I coulda sworn I saw a third hair go white.

  “Okay . . . okay . . . let’s just think about this,” I said, trying to buy some time before Jax bought a one-way ticket. “Where’d you lose the eight?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ve retraced my steps. It’s gone.”

  He took two steps closer to the edge; one more and he’d be a pavement burger.

  “Hey look!” I said, pointing off to my left. “Carly’s naked in a ’copter!”

  “Where!?”

  I caught his chin right on the square. What surprised me is that it shattered, like it was made of glass . . . or the bones were old. Jax looked back at me, his pretty face kinda outta whack now.

  “That hurt,” he tried to say, just before he passed out. He started to fall backward and woulda taken the plunge if I hadn’t caught him by his tie. He slumped forward on top of me and I was glad I’d spent all those years lifting sacks of beans on that coffee plantation in Costa Rica.

  But it was all too easy: the punch and the pass-out. This was one of the most . . . all right, there’s no other word for it . . . “manly” men in the mid-Atlantic state area. Jax was a straight arrow; an Eagle Scout who grew up into Cary Grant. He was the clean-cut altar boy with a little Clark Kent on the side. This guy even gave Sonny Corinthos a run for his money in the lady-killer department and he could almost out-muscle Stone Cold Morgan. I shoulda never been able to take him like that. But I could think about it tomorrow, after I’d gotten him into a nice, cozy ambulance.

  “C’mon, Mumbles. Let’s get you down.”

  The next morning, after a cup of Colombian and a chat with the docs at General Hospital to check on Jax’s condition (his vitals were weak, but stable, and he was sleeping like a baby, or like me after a sleeping pill with a beer chaser), I headed over to his penthouse at the Metro Court. My skeleton key let me in, and I went over the place like it was Rockefeller’s last will and testament. Nothing. Not one beauty product out of place.

  I drove over to Carly’s house, the one she got when she and Jax divorced. I was gonna tell her about Jax’s condition and see if she could explain some of her ex’s crazy talk.

  I knocked twice, then after a few minutes I let myself in. Didn’t look like anyone was home; then I heard Carly’s laugh comin’ from the direction of the pool. I poked my head out from behind one of the floor-to-ceiling curtains and saw the former Mrs. Jax, wearin’ a doll-sized swimsuit, makin’ very merry with two cabana boys, one of whom didn’t look much older than her son, Michael.

  “Nice,” I thought. “Nice broad. Keep her ocupada, boys, and thanks.”

  I turned around. I had the perfect opportunity to shake down the joint, if only the laugh twins would buy me the time. I backtracked through the yellow and black living room and was heading to another part of the house . . .

  . . . when I saw it.

  Carly’s purse sitting on one of the long, white couches. I might have gone right by it, but a flash of red outta the corner of my eye brought me up short. I walked over . . .

  . . . and there it was. Sticking right up out of a side pocket.

  The eight of diamonds.

  It was tattered and dog-eared. The print on the back wasn’t from any brand of cards I’d ever seen, and I’d seen some. And the size was all wrong. It was smaller than a normal card . . . kinda like it was from a different time and place.

  Why Carly had taken it in the first place was anyone’s guess. She was a walking roulette wheel and the ball always landed on “crazy.” She’d gotten everything she’d wanted in the split, but her emotions had been blended like a margarita. She hated Jax . . . but she still loved him, deep down, where it counts. She was suffering plenty just wakin’ up in the morning. My guess is that Jax had let her in on his crazy little secret during the whole “I can tell you anything” phase of their relationship, and then after the divorce she had gotten her mitts on the eight just to make him tumble over the edge. If she was gonna be miserable, so was he.

  Suddenly, I heard Carly on the patio just outside.

  “No, Emilio, I don’t want you to freshen my Tom Collins. You do it wrong every time, dammit! Besides, I want to change into something fun and festive!”

  Fun and festive? All that was left was her birthday suit, and while it would have made for a pretty picture, that was my cue to scram.

  I grabbed the card and was burning unleaded in less than thirty seconds. I knew where I had to go. Even if it was only superstition, a silly idea running around like a hamster inside Jax’s brain, maybe the idea of the card could help. The mind is a powerful thing; bendable at certain times, immovable at others. I thought about Maxie. When she got it into her head that she wanted hot Krispy Kremes, I knew I was goin’ for a drive to the nearest shop. Unfortunately, it was in North Carolina, but there was nothing else I could do. Her mind was like the walls of Sing Sing . . . no way around.

  I walked right past the nurse’s desk . . . Epiphany Johnson was yelling at a new resident; something about his charts being messy. I liked Epiphany, she was a real pro; no bull crap, fierce, but underneath . . . hell, I’d seen her toss full-grown men outta the hospital after visiting hours, then turn around and give a sucker to a frightened little kid. Or had she thrown out the kid and given the sucker to the . . . ?

  Either way, Nurse Johnson was tops.

  I left her telling the intern not to let the ER doors hit him in the ass, and went to Jax’s room.

  At least a dozen tubes and wires were stickin’ outta him in every direction. He looked thinner than he had on the tank the previous night . . . and the hair at his temples was completely gray. Maybe . . . I couldn’t tell, not really. The room was dark, the blackout curtains were drawn, and the night-light was on.

  I didn’t want to wake him, poor bastard; he looked almost peaceful. Then he rolled a bit to one side and his hand flopped off the edge
of the bed. He was clutching four cards; I could only see their backs, but they matched the eight of diamonds I had in my pocket.

  And he was holding on to them like they were a rosary.

  I gently slipped the eight into his fist with the rest.

  Now, maybe I was dreamin’ this next part. Maybe I got a little spooked myself. Maybe I had a piece of wax in one ear the size of a Brazil nut and it decided to fall out just at that moment. Or maybe what Billy the Bard says is true and “there’s more stuff in heaven and earth than we really know about, Harry,” and I just wanted to believe in something, anything, the way Jax believed in those cards, but . . . I’d swear on my mother’s grave, if I knew where it was . . . His heartbeat got a little louder. And the green line on the monitor started movin’ a little faster. A light went on over his bed that I knew was gonna send Epiphany Johnson on the run. I hid behind the door and, sure as bathtub gin’ll get you six months in the slammer, Epiphany Johnson and Dr. Patrick Drake were in his room in a flash. I slipped away like a ghost and walked out past the intern, cleaning up his charts and emptying a box of Kleenex.

  On my way out of the General Hospital parking structure, I put in a call to my favorite gal.

  “Hi, honey!” Maxie said. Her voice was real high and sweet on the other end of the line.

  “I woke up and you weren’t here. I got sad.”

  “That’s why I’m calling, doll-face,” I said. “Put on something nice; I’m pulling up in ten minutes. We’re going to North Carolina.”

  “Krispy Kremes!”

  “A whole dozen just for you, baby.”

  “What’s the occasion, Jackal?”

  “Does there have to be an occasion? It’s nothin’. It’s you and me, is all. It’s a drive on a nice day. We’re young, and good-lookin’, and we ain’t dead yet . . . so we’re gonna live a little. Today, Wilmington . . . tomorrow, who knows, kiddo, I may fly you to Paris.”

  “Oh, Spinelli!”

  “Yeah, well don’t put on your beret just yet. Just slip into your dungarees and be waitin’. Oh, and . . . doll?”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”