“You should know better than to creep up on people in the dark,” I tell her.
“You could have killed me!” she says.
“If I was aiming to kill you, you’d already be dead.”
Aunt Stacey swallows hard, thinking about that, starts fiddling with the silver S pendant around her neck.
“But how did you follow us here?” I can’t believe this woman could have tailed me all the way to Detroit and I never picked up on it.
“I used the Find My Phone app on Janet’s iPhone,” she says. Technology, the ultimate tail. “Is she okay?”
“Yes,” I say. “No thanks to you.”
“Was it her?” she asks me. “The body in the morgue? Was it Angela?”
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t her.”
“Oh.” More fiddling with the silver-plated S.
“Where did Angela say she was going when she left Janet with you?”
“She said her grandfather was sick,” Stacey says, dropping the pendant. “That she had to go see him. That’s all I know.”
Her eyes, now resembling the classic raccoon, shift off to the left, away from the gun. She could be looking to see if some crackhead in the crumbled building next door will come and rescue her, or she could have just lied to me. I raise the gun up to her chest again.
“What else did she say?”
“Nothing, I swear.” But those raccoon eyes shift off to the left again.
“Tell me what else she said.”
“I don’t want any trouble,” Aunt Stacey says, repeating her earlier mantra.
“You’re going to be in a hell of lot of trouble if you don’t tell me what you know.”
“Your mother made me promise not to say anything,” she snivels, a snot bubble inflating at one of her nostrils.
“And she promised she’d come back for my sister, but she didn’t. So, fucking spill it.” I take the safety off the gun. The loud click makes Stacey jump and Rudolph’s pom-pom nose bounces in-between her small boobs.
“She called me,” she says, her lower lip quivering.
“Who?”
“Angela,” Stacey says. “About a week after she left.”
“I’m listening.”
“She said her grandfather told her something. About her son.”
“My twin,” I say.
“You know about that?” Stacey asks, her doe eyes go wide within her disintegrating lashes.
“I know a lot of things,” I say, still not putting the safety back on my gun. “What else did she tell you?”
“That it could be worth some money,” she says. “What she found out.”
So, it was as we’d suspected. With so much dissension in the ranks about Alex Scarpello taking over the family business, Angela had been ready to cash in on her boy.
“Where did she say he was?” I ask her.
“Who?”
“Her son.”
The blackened doe eyes get wider. “What do you mean?” Stacey looks perplexed. “He wasn’t anywhere. He died.” This does not make sense. What could a dead son be worth to Angela in the scheme of things?
“When did he die?” I ask.
“When you were born. Angela knew she was having twins, and the Scarpellos made her go to a private clinic with their own doctor. They had to do a C-section. When she woke up from the anesthesia, they told her you were okay, but the boy had been a stillborn.”
The wheels are turning in my head, clicking all the facts into place. My father hadn’t been at the birth. But I bet someone else had. Someone who was a good enough friend to stay by your side while you tried to push out two kids in some Mob-sponsored private clinic. Someone who really needed a boy child or the Scarpello-Russki alliance would all go to shit. A woman who’d left the country and then come back with a son the same age as me. Who was still paying the bills for a doctor who’d delivered Angela’s twins more than thirty years ago.
“Who told her the boy died?” I ask Stacey. But I know before she tells me.
Anya Scarpello did.
CHAPTER 12
I LET AUNT STACEY GO IN THE END, after getting her to confirm that Anya Scarpello had arranged for the private clinic for Angela’s delivery and had been there when the whole thing went down. Anya knew that my mother was having twins, even if my dad didn’t. And with him away, it was a perfect opportunity for a woman who couldn’t seem to produce one baby to take advantage of a friend with the fucking nerve to come up with two. Stacey said that Angela never saw the son she gave birth to, that the doctor had whisked him away to save her the trauma of seeing his dark and still little face. But it was more than possible that Anya Scarpello had whisked my perfectly healthy twin brother off to Russia with a faked passport instead. If she told everyone she’d been pregnant when she left, the age difference when she came back would have been only a matter of months. It’s kind of brilliant when you think about it. No one would have been any the wiser. Except maybe her Russian relations, who also had a vested interest in making sure the Scarpello alliance went as planned.
Maybe the nurse in the morgue wasn’t down with kidnapping another woman’s newborn, and that’s what got her sent to the deep freeze. The doctor must have known better, trading his scruples for a lifetime of cash infusions from Anya Scarpello. A pretty good deal when you consider the alternative.
When Stacey leaves, she takes off out of the alleyway with a squeal of tires worse than the night I shot at her. Back to Canada, I suppose. She didn’t want to take Janet with her, still too worried that whatever shit Angela had got herself into might hit the fan and blow back on her legal right to sell dope. I swear, I could throttle that woman. If I’d known it was just a mascara-mad cannabis dealer following me when my car broke down, I’d have tackled her on the steps of the abandoned farmhouse and demanded a ride back to town. Then I could have slept in my own bed.
I go back to get the ice bucket from where I’d left it in the motel lobby, bypassing the Korean lady’s inner sanctum and entering through the door off the parking lot. I can still hear her television. But the evening news has now been replaced by Alex Trebek asking for answers in the form of questions. I’m sure that little motel lady has some questions of her own. But she’s smart enough to stay in her room and not ask them. I send a quick text to Charlotte, tell her I’d had to run because I have a new job doing mall Santa security and one of the elves got out of line. I’ll talk to her later.
Deep and Janet are waiting for me when I return, finally torn away from their respective screens.
“What took you so long?” Deep asks me, looking concerned.
“There was a bit of an incident,” I say, adjusting the gun, which is now slipped back down the front of my jeans.
“How can a trip to the ice machine cause a bloody incident?”
I put the ice bucket down on the table next to the now empty pizza box.
“I ran into Aunt Stacey. We had a little discussion,” I tell both of them. “It was her tailing me all along.”
“Aunt Stacey? Janet jumps up and pulls aside the curtain to look out into the parking lot. “Where is she?”
I sit down and pick up a piece of ice from the bucket, hold it under one of my eyes to try and deflate the puffy bags. “She had to leave,” I say, casting a knowing look at Deep.
Janet turns away from the window. “She’s not coming back for me. Is she?”
I think of Stacey trembling by her car at gunpoint in her ugly Christmas sweater, her snot dripping down onto Rudolph’s pom-pom nose.
“No,” I say. “I don’t think she is.”
“That’s okay,” Janet says, coming away from the window and plunking herself down on the bed. “I never liked staying at her place, anyway. It was really hot, and it smelled funny.” But you can see the pain of rejection dart across her face. First her mother, and now Aunt Stacey, leaving her behind.
“What did she say?” Deep asks me.
I could keep this all under my hat, instead of tipping it to let my s
uspicions be known. But Deep is already aware of Anya Scarpello’s fertility issues, as well as the connection with the doctor who’d signed off on the fake single birth registration. And despite what I’d said, it was possible that Aunt Stacey might come back and spill the baby beans to Janet about what Angela told her. Neither Deep nor my sister are stupid. They’ll eventually connect the dots, just like I did, about who my twin brother might be. I decide it’s better if the information comes from me. The medium may be the message, but it also has more control over what gets said. I relay most of my conversation with Charlotte as well as Aunt Stacey, leaving out the piece where the latter conversation was held at gunpoint.
“So, you reckon Alex Scarpello is your brother?” Deep asks when I’m done, showing his dot-connecting abilities are much as I’d expected.
“Our brother,” Janet corrects him, having made her own connections.
“It sure as hell looks like he is,” I say, switching the ice to my other eye. “The old Don told Angela something about her son when she went to see him. I’m thinking he must have known about the baby-snatch caper and had an attack of conscience before he bought the farm.” Like Roberto said, there’s nothing like impending death to reset a man’s moral compass.
“The timing and Alex Scarpello’s age lines up,” Deep says, closing the top on the pizza box and stacking it carefully in the corner for recycling. “And that would explain why Angela didn’t start causing problems for Alex Scarpello until now.”
“It would,” I say, picturing Angela’s reaction to the old man’s reveal. She wouldn’t have been able to see straight for the dollar signs dancing in her head if she found out the son she thought died was really the heir fucking apparent for the Scarpello fortunes. Of course, I’ve been thinking about those monetary possibilities myself. Like mother, like daughter, I suppose. Although, it makes me cringe a bit to think about those sort of comparisons. But having the current Don as my twin brother brings up a whole new avenue of exploitation. One that doesn’t involve a messy coup. He could be asked for favours if he were amenable. Blackmailed about the information if he wasn’t. Maybe I won’t have to live out the rest of my days in a room above the E-Zee Market after all. This could be the fucking “brother lode” for me.
“Of course, there could be another explanation,” Deep says.
“Like what?” I’m on a roll here, and I’ve never liked debates. Except the ones for the presidential election a few years back. Clinton vs. Trump. Now that was entertainment.
“Her grandfather could have told her something else about her son,” Deep says.
“Something that was going to net her a bunch of cash? Stacey said there was a payoff involved.”
“Maybe they messed up the delivery,” Janet says. “And that’s why the baby died. She could have sued for malpractice or something.”
“There’s a statute of limitations on stuff like that,” I tell her. “It’s not like murder.” This is something I know about. “And besides, how would that piss off Alex Scarpello?”
Neither of them has an answer for that, but they still don’t look convinced.
“Listen, Anya is the one who told Angela the baby died. She was there at the clinic. And, conveniently, that same year she comes up with a son over in Russia, where no one can verify that he’s actually hers. The doctor who signed off on the birth registry is on her permanent payroll, and the maternity nurse was put on ice for three decades. The whole thing stinks of a cover-up.”
“Alex Scarpello would lose a lot if the Russian side of his lineage was called into question,” Deep says, coming over to my side. “His major supporters are from the Eastern European gangs. With people already concerned about his fitness to lead, something like this could definitely cause a war.”
“But he wouldn’t hurt Mom, would he?” Janet asks with hope in her eyes. “If it’s true, then she’s his mother, too.”
I’d like to mirror Janet’s hope, for her sake. But Roberto had said Alex Scarpello was vicious, unpredictable, possibly unbalanced. Still, you’d have to be one hell of a cold bastard to bump off your own birth mother.
“Let’s just take it one step at a time,” I say. “I’ll meet up with them tonight and see what happens.” I drop my piece of ice back into the bucket, wipe away the melted tears it’s left on my cheeks with a napkin left over from the pizza. “In the meantime, Deep, how hard is it to hack into some Russian birth records?”
“Hard,” he says. “But I’ll see what I can do.
“It could give us some leverage, if we had proof.” It could also keep me from getting killed, I’m thinking. Right now, all we have is a damn good theory. Theories can be snuffed out with the person who speculates about them. Documented facts have a life of their own.
“I still don’t like the idea of you going there tonight,” Deep says.
Janet doesn’t look too happy about it, either. As much as she wants to find Angela, the idea of me disappearing into the void her mother was last seen entering has got to be causing the kid some anxiety. I try to reassure them both.
“If things get hot, I’ll just tell them I already have documents proving Alex Scarpello is an Italian-Pole changeling. That if anything happens to me, it’ll go public. You know the drill. You’ve seen it in the movies.”
I stand up. It’s getting late and I need to get moving if I’m going to make it for dinner at eight.
“What if he isn’t?” Janet asks.
“Isn’t what?”
“A changeling,” she says.
“Then he has no good reason to kill me now, does he?”
The address that Anya gave me is in the Indian Village that isn’t, but not on one of the streets that ripped off its name from Native Americans. I get the Uber driver to drop me off about a block away, so I can get a feel for the place. Deep had wanted to drive me, but I convinced him to stay with Janet. I left the two of them in the motel room, playing Risk, that board game where each country tries to destroy each other and take over the world. Deep had brought it from home. That goddamn game goes on forever. Much like the real-life version.
At first, I think I’m in the wrong neighbourhood. On the main road, there are a bunch of sketchy-looking low-rise apartment buildings fronted by a strip mall that has not one but two pharmacies sporting rusty metal bars across the windows. There’s also one of those cheque cashing places used only by the desperate, or by naive stooges tricked into sending money to Nigerian princes on the lam. I’m feeling damn cold, although the temperature is still probably a few points above the freezing mark. I jam my hands into my leather jacket and start making my way down a residential street, wishing I’d brought my gloves.
After I get to the other side of the sketchy low-rises, the real estate abruptly changes to large homes, all built from old money, but with significant injections from the newer variety. Restored turn-of-the century mansions line the street, sitting on big-ass lots. Some of the houses are framed with multiple strings of flashing Christmas lights, enough to induce a small seizure. They look like life-sized Victorian dollhouses gone Vegas.
When I get to the address Anya Scarpello gave me, I cross to the other side of the street and deke into the shadows behind a low stone wall covered in ivy. I crouch down behind it to conceal myself, which isn’t easy on account of how tall I am. What’s the point of building a wall in front of your property when it’s this short? It doesn’t keep anyone out, including the ivy. The house behind me looks empty, no lights on, even though the sun went down hours ago. It’s a good enough place to hide and observe for now.
I check out the Scarpello compound across the quiet street. It’s Alex’s place, but Anya lives with him, according to Deep’s preliminary research. I count four chimneys and a turret with a witch-hat roof. I don’t know what they call this kind of architecture, but it reminds me of the house perched above the Bates Motel in the movie Psycho. That’s if Anthony Perkins’s character had spent his time fixing the place up instead of mummifying his mother a
nd stabbing women in the shower.
There are CCTV cameras mounted under the eaves rather than Christmas lights here. A goon in a puffy parka like Janet’s is patrolling the edges of the property. Each time he comes around the side yard, I can see the glowing end of a cigarette tucked in his gob as he smacks his gloved hands together to keep them warm. There’s a significant bulge under the front of his heavy jacket, visible despite its bulk and his own. The bulge looks too big for a revolver, too small for an M16. Most likely an Uzi. I hate those Israeli submachine guns from hell. Not because they’re Israeli but because they have a twenty-five-plus round capacity that will cap your ass before you even have a chance to kiss it goodbye.
Either his shift is over or he was only out for a smoke break, because the patrol eventually knocks on the side door of the four-car garage, and another man lets him in. I’m about to come out from behind the wall and cross the street when my phone shudders in my pocket. I pull it out and look at the screen glowing in the dark. Fucking Malone. I better answer it. She’ll want an update on Janet, and if I don’t give her one, she might show up at the E-Zee Market and find out my sister hasn’t been there in two days.
“Hey, Malone.” I try to act all laid back and natural, and not like a woman skulking under the ivy across the street from a Mafia stronghold.
“Is it true you took Janet to the science museum?”
“Yes.” Not sure where she’s going with this, but I’m okay to play along.
“I didn’t think you had it in you. To do something normal like that.”
“Would it help if I told you we scammed public transit to get there?”
“No.”
“Then we didn’t.” I’ve been jumping turnstiles into the subway since I was ten. Janet wasn’t too bad at it when I showed her how it was done. She said she did hurdles in track at school, cleaned up in her age category on account of her height.
It appears that Malone has only called to chat. Since she is technically my friend, this isn’t entirely suspicious, but it still feels alien to me.
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