Michael sends Frankie to bed, saying they’ll sleep a few hours and leave for Virginia by mid-afternoon. He can’t leave the car in the alley all day and street parking is out of the question. The forecast is calling for a warm spring day so he drives six blocks to a self-park garage and carefully backs into a dark corner space that the bright light and thawing heat of the midday sun will never reach. He’s nervous and edgy walking back to the house. A few hours of sleep, however unsettled, will help to calm him down. He lights a new cigarette from the ash of his last. The streets are deserted, yet he feels he’s being watched, curious eyes tracking his every turn. The calls of awakening birds sound like threats in the ominous silence. A car approaches from behind. He tenses as it slows, expecting to be jumped by a posse of desperados searching for a missing boy. He stops and turns to confront them and the car races down the street, running stop signs and red lights, making a speedy getaway.
The phone call wakes him at ten forty-five, two and a half hours after he was able to fall asleep.
“Mr. Gagliano, I think it’s really important that you be here. The son contacted an undertaker to collect the remains when your sister passes. He’s insisting his mother wanted a viewing and a traditional burial in her husband’s plot.”
“Stepson,” he repeats. “He’s only a stepson.”
The social worker sounds young and inexperienced, incapable of confronting the overbearing and demanding Shevchek clan.
“Please. You really need to be here. Dr. Patel wants to know when you’ll be arriving.”
“There’s nothing her son can do while she’s still alive. I’ll be there tomorrow. Sometime tomorrow.”
“We’d thought you were arriving yesterday. Now you’re saying it will be another day.”
She sounds pitiful, lost.
“Look,” he says, resenting the need to explain his absence. “My son fell off his skateboard. Complex fracture. He needed surgery. Are you saying you expect me to leave the bedside of my little boy to sit with a woman in a coma?”
“Oh God. I’m so sorry,” she gasps. “Is he going to be all right?”
“Yes. Thank you. But I won’t be able to leave until tomorrow.”
“I understand. Please know I’ll keep your son in my prayers.”
Jesus Christ. Can he sink any lower? He’s superstitious. He wears a Saint Rocco medal—wore a Saint Rocco medal—around his neck, hidden beneath his Brooks Brothers High Wasp attire. He won’t allow a cat in his house. Why is he taunting the fates, inviting the evil eye to punish him for telling desperate lies about his innocent little boy?
He won’t be able to go back to sleep. He may as well put the next four hours to good use. He begins a list of items they’ll need once they return home. Rags. Rubber gloves. Goggles would be wise to protect their eyes from splashing. A case of bleach. No, two cases of bleach. Industrial strength. Mops and buckets. The entire house doesn’t need to be scrubbed free of DNA evidence. The body only traveled from the master bath to the basement, then back up the steps and out the back door. The hardwood staircases will be the biggest challenge.
He stares at the scribbled list he’s holding in his hand and sees an exhibit in the case against him for accomplice after the fact. He rips it into tiny pieces that he flushes down the closest toilet. His ears prick and his heart sinks, hearing voices below. That fucking priest must be downstairs, come to offer a helping hand with Michael’s phony wiring project. Shouldn’t he be saying Mass or something? He’s gum on your shoes, a bad penny, the guest who refuses to leave.
But it isn’t Jack Centafore he finds deep in conversation with his brother in the salon.
“Excuse me,” he says politely as he interrupts whatever business they’re conducting.
Michael, the experienced prosecutor, instinctually knows they’re not police investigators or immigration officials. The stranger standing closest to Frankie introduces himself as Cesar; his friend is called Guillermo. They’re well dressed, wearing pointy boots and studded belts and those metal wrist bracelets that are indigenous to the American Southwest. Guillermo, the older of the two, wears an amulet, a coral disk on a leather string around his neck.
They claim to be cousins of Mariano. Mariano’s brother Randy has sent them for the little burro. Every moment now is precious. Confidentially, they can’t just put the boy on a plane back to Mexico. Problems with his papers. They’re going to take a long road trip and cross the border in Arizona. Randy is already back home. Their mother, her chest full of cancer, lingers, waiting to say good-bye to her baby, her favorite, before dying. Their story is heartfelt and sounds almost true. At least they don’t seem to suspect Frankie has made the connection and knows Mariano’s supposed brother Randy Garza also goes by the alias Randy Salazar, whose name and face have been in the papers.
“I told them Mariano hasn’t come home for nearly a week. I’m worried something has happened to him,” Frankie says, surprising his brother with his smooth delivery of a blatant lie.
Michael offers their guests water, coffee, something to drink, which they graciously decline.
“What else did Frankie tell you?” Michael asks.
He’s certain firearms are concealed under the flaps of their sport coats. He wishes his own handgun weren’t in a travel bag upstairs. But, touching his pocket, he realizes he’s carrying a far more intimidating weapon than any gun. He sees the subtle changes in their faces, the barely detectable hint of tension in their shoulders, when he shows them his badge. They’re poised, alert, cats eyeing their prey just before they strike. They’ve walked into the unexpected. Michael quickly shoves it back in his pocket, denying them the opportunity to discover he’s just a lawyer, not a police officer. Everyone is apprehensive, uncertain of what the next few moments will bring.
“Look, guys,” Michael says amiably, defusing the room. “Frankie doesn’t want Mariano to get into trouble. Me? Well, it’s hard for a cop to sit back and do nothing.”
The two men are clearly confused.
“But Frankie’s my big brother and I don’t want to do anything to upset him. I had the credit cards cut off as soon as he discovered his wallet was missing. The kid charged a couple hundred bucks at Macy’s. Nothing to get too upset about. And Frankie won’t miss the thousand dollars in cash Mariano walked away with. It’s something personal he took that’s killing me. The watch he stole was worth fifteen thousand bucks. Insurance will cover the replacement cost, but they won’t process the claim if Frankie doesn’t file a police report. That watch belonged to our father. We miss him every day and it was all we had left of him. I’ll be honest with you. I didn’t like your friend Randy’s brother. But he made Frankie happy and I don’t want to have him hauled in and charged with theft. And I wouldn’t do it if he hadn’t stolen that watch.”
The man wearing the amulet speaks with the voice of authority.
“Officer, it is very important to Randy that his brother be able to return as a legal someday. You are aware he cannot have a record. I know that Randy will make you whole. I will bring you the money myself tomorrow.”
“No. No,” Michael insists, appearing to be a paragon of generosity. “That isn’t fair. Randy didn’t steal the watch and we can’t take his money. We can keep this between ourselves if you give me your solemn promise. All I ask is that you return the watch to us when you find the boy.”
“Officer, you are a very kind man,” Guillermo says, obviously relieved that a showdown at the O.K. Corral won’t be necessary to keep the norteamericanos from filing a police report. “You have my word. I swear on the souls of my children.”
Good fortune blesses the Gagliano brothers by placing a Goodwill clothing donation box in the parking lot of the travel plaza at the South Wilmington exit off Interstate 95. Michael had chosen a route to avoid any toll lanes, and they’d planned on tossing Mariano’s clothes in the dumpster of a Delaware Wal-Mart or Kroger and had hoped that no over-vigilant store manager ever questioned how two bags of used clothes ende
d up in his trash. Instead they’ll be scattered to the winds, impossible to trace. The boy’s garish, gender-bending sequined T-shirts and blouses will brighten the summer wardrobes of the wives and daughters of the migrant farmworkers of the lower counties of the state. His boxy black shoes and designer sneakers will be a perfect fit for the size-seven feet of their sons. And some lucky bastard is going to become the proud new owner of Frannie Merlino’s first husband’s valuable watch.
“Frankie!” he shouts, looking up just in time to see his feckless brother about to swipe his debit card at the gas pump. “Cash only, I told you. No fucking records. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Frankie looks abashed.
“Sorry, Mikey. I forgot.”
“I’m going to go pay inside. Take those two trash bags of his clothes and throw them in the Goodwill box. Make sure no one can see inside the trunk. And try not to look so goddamn guilty about making a donation to charity.”
Michael’s self-conscious about the sweat on his forehead, but the cashier never looks up from his register as he rings up thirty dollars for gas and two packs of Marlboro Lights. The car already reeks of tobacco. He’s going to need to take it to be detailed; Kit has a beagle’s nose for any scent of vice.
“You’re bleeding, buddy,” the bruiser in a leather jacket waiting to pay for a liter of Mountain Dew tells him and, sure enough, there’s a bright red blood smear on one of the bills in his hand. He inspects his thumb, uncertain where or when he got the gash at the tip. He doesn’t remember cutting himself, didn’t feel any pain. How long has he been leaving a DNA trail behind him?
“Look at this shit!” he panics, sticking his bloody thumb in Frankie’s face as he crawls behind the wheel of the car. “We are truly fucked.”
“Did you get any Band-Aids in there? You don’t want that getting infected.”
“Jesus, I’m dripping evidence across two states and you’re worried I’m going to lose my hand to a staph infection.”
“What are you getting so worked up about? I haven’t seen you in a state like this since you were a kid. It’s your blood, Mikey, and I may not be some fancy criminal lawyer but I don’t think it’s a crime to cut your finger in your own car.”
Since when did Frankie become so maddeningly sane?
Michael taps his foot on the brake when the speedometer inches above the posted speed limit. Tractor trailers are doing eighty miles an hour in the passing lane, but he exercises self-control, wary of speed traps and the curious eyes of the state patrol. He rolls his head and cracks his neck. He needs to harness his adrenaline, to extinguish the flash fire blazing through his bloodstream. It’s a rush he recalls from his playing days, this sensation of electrical charges igniting his senses, the elation of knowing he’s in control, confident in his ability to channel the waves of pure energy pulsing in every cell of his body. He nearly jumps through his skin when his cell phone unexpectedly starts ringing.
“Keep quiet,” he warns his brother as he takes a call from home.
“How is she?” Kit asks.
“The same.”
She quickly moves on to the real purpose of her call. She’s in the ED herself, waiting for Miss P to be discharged. The party ended in disaster when the old ballerina, after tippling four glasses of sherry, broke a bone in her foot attempting to demonstrate the proper way to execute a jeté battu.
“Good God, you’re in a generous mood!” she exclaims when he doesn’t object to her decision to hire—and pay for—twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week home care services until the nasty bitch is ambulatory.
“I doubt the lucky caretaker will thank us for our generosity after two hours on the job.”
“I’m staying with her myself tonight. Dodie’s keeping Danny. I promised you’d call to say good night.”
His son is happy to hear Michael’s voice. He doesn’t remember the woman they call his aunt Polly so his father’s sudden rush to leave town is a mystery to him. Before hanging up, he elicits his dad’s solemn promise to bring him back a present and asks him to reaffirm his solemn oath they’ll be in the audience for the midnight opening of The Dark Knight this summer. Michael feels a chill run down his spine. Only a cold-blooded sociopath could tell his son that he loves him and to not give Dodie any grief over bedtime while speeding down the interstate with a frozen body thawing in the trunk. He tries clearing his head by playing “Rosalita” at full volume through the powerful speakers.
“Jesus, Mikey, are you trying to go deaf?” Frankie shouts as he turns down the music. “How many times in your life are you going to listen to that same song?”
“As many times as you’re going to listen to fucking ‘Rhiannon,’” he answers as he lights another cigarette and blows the smoke out the open window.
A light rain, more a mist than a downpour, greets them at the Virginia border. It looks like the type of precipitation that’s sure to linger though dawn. It’s just wet enough to jeopardize their chances of finishing this macabre chore before daybreak. Michael had been counting on a starry night with clear visibility to execute the game plan.
“We’re close, aren’t we?” Frankie asks.
He’d wanted to program the destination on the GPS, but Michael was adamant, insisting there’s always the chance the device could be confiscated pursuant to a search warrant. He won’t even let Frankie buy a gas station map. He assures his brother his recall of the area is clear and accurate, surprising him with his admission that he’d returned to the Virginia island last summer, with Danny, for the famous wild pony swim across the channel when the annual pilgrimage to the twelve-room Scott family “cottage” in Maine was canceled due to a rescheduled creditor’s hearing in bankruptcy court for Kit’s largest client.
“I love this smell,” Frankie says as they near the causeway, rolling down the window to inhale the pungent breezes, laced with sulfur from the brackish waters of the inlets and coves of the Chincoteague Bay. “Papa really hated it here, remember?” The Virginia coast had brought back unpleasant memories of the malarial swamps of their father’s Calabrian childhood.
Between the mainland and the coastline is a vast and monotonous prairie of marsh grasses that will be Mariano’s sepulcher. The clouds overhead recede suddenly, like thick velvet stage curtains parting to reveal the opening act of a play. The bright lights of the constellations in the clearing sky illuminate the weathered shacks of the truck farmers and oystermen who live on these tiny barrier islands. Rows of exposed cement burial vaults in the churchyard of a small Pentecostal church bear witness to the folly of interment below sea level. A fire-breathing Jesus, staring from a billboard in the shallow waters at the shoreline, eyes blazing with vengeance, promises sinners the tortures of hell.
“Up there, the last island before the bridge into town, that’s where we’re going to do it,” Michael says, pointing ahead.
“Mikey!”
A white-tailed doe in mid-flight, tense as a coiled spring, leaps into the bright beams of the headlights. Michael loses control of the car, avoiding a head-on collision but clipping the animal as the sedan sails into a tailspin, stalling out on the road. The wounded deer limps away, dragging its broken leg in the sandy soil.
“We can’t just leave it like this, Mikey,” Frankie pleads as they get out of the car to inspect the damage.
“What do you want me to do? Take it to the vet?” he snaps, flustered and impatient with his brother’s sentimentality.
“Can’t we put it out of its misery?”
Michael reaches for the canvas bag on the floor behind the front seat to retrieve the revolver. The animal is exhausted by its futile attempt at escape, staggering from the loss of blood and the effort of dragging its weight. It turns its majestic head and Michael sees the suffering and fear in its pleading eyes. He takes aim and kills it with a clean hit to the skull, confident that the sound of gunfire, a single shot, won’t draw attention in a rural area where every truck has a rifle rack and the roadside stands all sell discount ammunitio
n.
He and Frankie avoid facing each other. They haven’t cried for the dead boy but killing a maimed animal brings them to tears. The damage to the fender is cosmetic, thankfully, and they drive another half mile before Michael swerves onto a dirt road, breathing a sigh of relief that the rain hasn’t made it impassable. It’s a bumpy ride and the car bounces in the deep ruts cut by the brutal tire treads of pickup trucks and all-terrain vehicles.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Frankie asks timidly.
“Danny and I went crabbing down here last summer. We can get to the marsh through this field. We can’t just park the car on the causeway.”
“Jesus Christ, Mikey. I remember this place,” Frankie says, recognizing the ruins of an abandoned drive-in theater. “We saw Star Wars here.”
The cinder-block screen and rusted speaker poles, awash with milky moonlight, are as imposing and dignified as the broken columns and fractured temple walls of the ancient forum of Rome. The parking lot has been overrun by pine saplings and scrub brush, forcing them to finish their journey on foot. Michael parks behind the concession stand. The corrugated roof collapsed long ago and the boards that once sealed the doorway have rotted away. The eyes of nocturnal creatures foraging inside the walls glow in the headlights.
“The screen was too small. Han Solo’s head was in the trees,” Frankie recalls.
“You ready to do this, Frankie?” Michael asks, uninterested in reminiscing, as he turns off the engine and kills the headlights.
He looks down at Frankie’s feet, then his own, remembering an important detail he’d overlooked, forgotten in the haste to get out of Philadelphia. The only shoes they have are the ones they are wearing, sneakers with distinctive treads that will have to be dumped along some deserted stretch of Maryland State Highway 13, making it impossible to trace Michael and Frankie to any footprints that might be discovered in the muddy marsh banks. He opens the trunk, lifts the wardrobe bag, and grabs the shower curtain he’d used to line the trunk, telling Frankie to follow with the cement blocks and the chain and to stay close behind. Frankie’s breathing is labored before they’re halfway across the old parking lot and Michael realizes he hasn’t taken into account the stress and strain of lugging heavy chunks of concrete on his brother’s lipid-soaked cardiovascular system. Michael realizes he should have carried Mariano into the marsh, then come back for the blocks. Please God, don’t let him have a heart attack out here in the middle of nowhere, he prays, knowing even he’s not smart enough to make up a plausible explanation for his brother dying in a Virginia salt marsh in the middle of the night.
The Boys from Eighth and Carpenter Page 35
