“You mean this Parisi guy that’s been in everybody’s cliff notes.”
“More like the people employed by him.”
“Arnie the Hook or whatever.”
“Hammer,” Alex pulled away from the window and sighed. “Parisi, what can I say? He's an eccentric guy. Despite his status as a crime lord, he has a particular fondness for comic books and Japanese Anime and nerd fiction, more of a sick and sadistic fascination. And he rather enjoys living out those fantasies, which scares the knickers out of me.”
“So you're telling us that right now, at this very moment,” Leah jumped into the conversation, “there's a hit man with a hook for a hand somewhere out there, and he's potentially on his way to my apartment.” She spoke coolly, with no hint of fear about her.
Alex frowned. “It's possible.”
“Oh....my.....god....” Richie tightened the headband around his skull and then continued to exhume a series of concentrated breaths through his nose.
I said: “You need to leave, now.”
“Joshua, you've got to believe me. I didn't kill anybody.”
“Turn yourself in then.”
“I'm already dead, remember?”
“I know a couple of police detectives, Mello and Hurley, who'd love to have you over for donuts and coffee. In fact, I'll even be courteous enough to give you until sunrise before I call it in and play them the Hallelujah Chorus, the dead has raised.”
“Don't you get it? If I turn myself in I'm as good as dead. DEAD. Mancini and Parisi may hate each other, but they have a new common hobby, me. And what's worse, they have just as much influence within prison walls than they do outside, and probably more.”
“If Mancini knows that you didn't kill her, that this is all a sick Parker Brothers game of Sorry on Parisi’s end.”
“I'm not taking any chances.” His desperation was only intensifying.
“You can't stay here.”
“Get me out of town then. I don't have anywhere else to go.”
“There are eight million people in New York. Start knocking on numbers.” I started for the door and unbolted the chain from its lock. Alex slapped his hand up against it.
“I've got another contact, but he's not in the city. It's a quick drive. Drop me off, just one more simple favor, and you'll never have to see or hear from me again.”
“Look me in the eyes.” I stood as tall as I could and winced from the pain between my ribs. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you didn't have anything to do with the death of your wife.”
Alex followed my instructions. “I'll say it again. I didn't....kill....Gracie.”
“Alex, when we were reunited again in Vegas and you gave me the whole rundown about your former involvement in Gracie's family, I didn't ask any questions because you told me you were totally and absolutely through with it. You said you wanted out.”
“That's exactly what this is about.”
“Do you believe him?” Leah said with a voice that spoke of authority.
Alex kept his eyes on me. I stared into them a while longer, trying to find any possible hint that there was a soul somewhere in there. I thought I might have found one. It only then occurred to me that the only real way to ever get out of the Mancini family was to die, or in Alex's case, to have someone kill you in Ho Chi Minh. I could only wonder how long he’d been plotting this move and if his sudden entrance into my life earlier that summer made me a convenient pawn in the unfolding scheme.
“Yes, I do,” I finally said, “Mostly.”
When I turned around, Leah was still leaning against the island counter-space taking the entire scene in. I gazed into her eyes for guidance, anything that she was willing to give.
“This is your decision,” she said. “I'll support you either way.”
I still wanted her take on it. “Do you believe him?”
“The question is, are you certain?”
“Yes, mostly.”
“Then I am to…..mostly”
I went for the counter and retrieved my car keys.
“Where are we going?” I turned to Alex.
“Philadelphia,” he said.
I set my keys back down. “You're joking. I'm not aiding and abiding a fugitive across two state lines.”
“Get me safely to Philadelphia and I can permanently go into hiding.”
I picked my keys back up again.
“Not with your rental car, you're not.” Leah went for her own wallet and keys. “We're taking Albino Cave Dweller.” That was the name of her car.
“What do you think you're doing?” I said.
“Joshua, there's toll roads and cameras up and down the New Jersey turnpike. We're practically living in a police state now. Even if you safely drop him off and he's caught anywhere within the vicinity, they'll match up your rental car with countless photographs. Don't add to your own suspicion in this fiasco.”
“Good point.” I grabbed Leah's keys. “I'll take it from here.”
“No, you won’t.” She grabbed them back.
“This isn't a game, Leah. If we're caught....”
“I'm not getting caught,” Alex said. “I'm dead, remember? Nobody from the police state is looking for me.”
“You've been stabbed and punched enough for one weekend. This is gonna take a few hours, and you can't make the drive alone. I'm driving. You're lying low in the back.”
“I'll drive,” Alex said.
“Like hell you will. You're riding in the trunk.” Leah.
“I'm not riding in the trunk.”
“Then you can't have Joshua.” She grabbed my arm.
“She's the boss.” I grinned.
“I'm coming too.” Penny jumped into the conversation.
“No Penny. You're not,” I said.
“Listen to Isla Elliot. You've been stabbed, Joshua. And since you're apparently not visiting a hospital anytime soon, I'm the only one here who can stitch your guts back up if they start oozing back out again. I'm going.” She went for the medical supplies in the bedroom.
“What about you?” I looked towards Richie. “Is this your party too?”
“Are you kidding? Of course I'm coming.” Richie revealed a pair of nunchucks, wrapping five hell bent knuckles around each handle. “If Arnie the Hammer shows up on our trail, I'll be Davy Crockett and hold down the Alamo.”
“I don't recall the Alamo ending so well for.”
“Yeah, well, you said it yourself. It's my party and I can cry if I want to.”
“Let's not waste any more time then,” Leah said. “There's a fire escape in the back. If Sinatra's hanging around in his usual spot, he'll never see us.” She went for my camera bag. “I'll grab your stuff. I get this feeling that you won't be returning any time soon.”
I turned towards Richie. “You sure you want to come along?”
“I've been training my entire life for this moment.” More concentrated breathing.
“Believe me,” Leah said, “Richie doesn't get around much. The Bronx might as well be another foreign country. The fact that we're crossing into Pennsylvania just rocked his world.”
“Long live the Alamo then.” I held a single fist up.
“If nobody makes it out alive, we'll rondevu tomorrow morning in hell.” Richie.
“Yes.” I started towards the door. “Let's be sure to do that.”
4
ALBINO CAVE DWELLER was an eye-sore. That was the most recent name given to Leah's Volvo. Large rusted acne scars dominated the hood and roof where paint had once been baby-buttocks smooth. She'd been driving that clunker so long as I'd known her, inheriting it her sophomore year of high school from her elder brother Kyle after he took up the life of a sailor. It had seen better days, probably long before Kyle first put the petal to the metal. Even then in our adolescence it was a clunker (she affectionately referred to it then as Bob Dole), with a radio that strangely no longer worked and a tape deck that refused to spit out its final relic of the nineties, Shania Twain, Man,
I Feel Like a Woman! I wrote a little about Albino Cave Dweller's singular affection for Shania Twain on the night when Bishop and I reunited at that Boston wedding. It was the night she and everyone else were too drunk to do anything but wail along to Shania while I chaperoned. It's in Wrong Flight Home.
My entire point is, when Leah started up the ignition, Shania said: Let's go girls, and the memories sunk in. Leah quickly shut its one remaining speaker off in a sort of panic, tightening her shoulders and shushing Albino Cave Dweller's singer with an Oh shit as she dialed the knob to silence. Even under the troubling circumstances I couldn't help but laugh about it. So did Leah. Of course, laughter is often the result of nervousness or fear, which makes the very thought of comedy somewhat unreformed and morbid. It's probably why girls giggle when they see a cute boy.
Penny twitched her eyes. “What are we laughing about?”
Richie rolled his. “Oh girl, if only you knew.”
5
“I'M NOT GOING IN THE TRUNK!” Alex scowled from the alley, staring into the back-end of Leah's Volvo. I only suspected half of his statement was in protest, with his remaining strength putting all chips down on the hope that Leah's claim was in jest.
“Yes, you are.” Leah spoke in a perfectly calm voice as she held it open for him. The engine was running and Shania was knobbed off. Richie stood with the front passenger door open and Penny with the back, both eager to enter but too unsettled to sit and wait.
Alex spoke directly to me now. “Tell her I'm not riding hundreds of miles in the trunk.”
“You heard the woman,” was my response. I studied the address of our destination in Philly (I had him scribble it on a torn cloth of college-rule paper) and folded it into my pocket. A sticker on Albino's bumper read: BROADWAY ACTORS DO IT IN THE SPOTLIGHT. I shook my head at the irony and said: “And if you wish to remain unanimous, keep your voice down.”
As if on cue, a window lit up in Brownstone's lower level. I thought it might be its parrot-squawking landlord, Chester Hamilton the Third, following his nose as usual. Actually, I was half-expecting the bulb of hidden paparazzi from behind a trashcan, but so far our plan had remained undisclosed, if Alex or Leah's landlord didn't screw it up.
“This is absurd. I'm not going in there.”
“Richie,” I said, “go around the corner and flag down a member of the press. Surely, they couldn't have strayed too far. Tell them we have a story of interest. Better yet, how about Mancini's watchdog? We'll finally learn if he's packing anything.”
Richie started in that direction without hesitation.
Alex defiantly watched him go. Some sort of smirk barely clung to his lips. Undoubtedly he thought this entire suggestion was an elaborate joke on our part, a Ha-ha, I get it, you're trying to get even with me sort of suggestion, until Richie made it as far as the corner and started at a ninety-degree angle, never flinching in his stride. That smirk fell off its hinge.
“No, wait.” Alex held a hand up, speaking loud enough for Chester Hamilton the Third to overhear, if he was indeed listening. Richie stopped in his tracks and lent an ear without turning completely around. “Dammit, I'm climbing in.” A four letter word was pronounced from his lips as he did so. It wasn't Fork. And then, with one foot in the trunk, he gazed at me with disdain and said: “You know, my father put down my dog once in the sixth grade the moment she was found to be with cancer. I loved that dog. She could have lived another six months. He just put the dog in the f-ing backseat and drove off, totally emotionless, totally unsympathetic to my pleas. All I ever wanted was to say good-bye in my own way. Since when did you become like my old man?”
“Your own personal daddy issues aside, it was when I decided the ass was unredeemable in its buckaroo trainability, that the obnoxious, nonsensical yea-hawing from its mouth was mockery towards those who sought to cultivate it. I guess I finally set my heart on releasing it back into the wild with the hyenas and the jackals, where the ass belongs, but not without first keeping it on a very short leash.”
“Let's go.” Leah nudged her chin at Richie as a sign that he should return to the Volvo. She climbed into the driver's seat, and within seconds Richie disappeared into the passenger side.
“Oh, and Penny's rules of the road,” Penny finally spoke, still clinging to the rear passenger door. “I'm already tired of the swearing, so unless you want a bar of soap in your mouth all the way to Philadelphia.....” She let the thought marinate on his intellectual taste buds, climbed in and closed the door after.
Curling up rather uncomfortably within the trunk Alex turned to me again, casting the gaze of a fearful child, almost sickly, like that cancerous dog that his father had once so unsympathetically put down. Ha-ha, I get it, another joke, his eyes said.
“You'd better listen to her. Penny's kind of kinky like that.” I started to close the trunk, considered that insult about his old man, and then stopped myself. “You know, I put a dog down once myself; the hardest thing I ever had to do. And just so you know, it takes far more courage than you're apparently capable of.”
I locked him into the darkness where he belonged.
6
OUR UNEVENTFUL GETAWAY wasn't nearly so unnoticed as planned, mostly because someone flicked the headlights of their car on before we could slip safely away from Bleecker Street, and proceeded to follow, thereby escalating any such escape from uneventful to eventful. I say someone because it wasn't Sinatra driving his Nissan Cube. This fellow was pursuing us in what looked to be a Chrysler 300, black as a tornado sparking power-lines in the night, with a metallic grill that could clamp down and chew Albino Cave Dweller to pieces.
Richie looked to me for guidance as we approached Washington Square with its iconic marble arch that celebrated our first president’s centennial. “So what's the plan? Are we gonna attempt to loose Sinatra again?”
I was having difficulty breathing. “I'm afraid that's not Sinatra.”
“What are you talking about?” Leah's eyes hunted me down through the rearview mirror. “I thought he's been following you all weekend.”
“Yeah, and this isn't him.”
WHAT'S HAPPENING!? Alex screamed from within the trunk. We ignored dumb-ass, hoping he'd somehow take a sightseeing safari into a black hole. Just to remind us how he hadn't taken that permanent vacation yet, he beat his fists on the back of my seat and utilized however many four-letter word variations that his vocabulary allowed for.
“Who is it then?” Leah's rearview eyes were unblinking.
Rather than setting my thoughts on the strange man using the urinal, I lassoed the first name that swam into my skull, the person whom I'd attempted to pronounce earlier that morning before Leah interrupted me. I said: “Jack Hoskins.”
“Who's Jack Hoskins?” Richie turned around in his seat.
Rather than answering him, I retrieved that rectangular cell device from my jeans (it hurt just to move) and found Dr. Ellie Alexander's name in the contacts list. A few rings on her end and I was directed to leave a message at the sound of the beep, so I hung up and called again. She answered this time on fourth and final ring.
“It's after midnight. This had better be an emergency. If you're not calling from heaven to let me know I've been left behind in the wake of the rapture.....” I guessed by that groggy tone or religious badgering she wasn't happy to hear from me so early in the morning. Who could have known?
“Ellie, just tell me one thing. Is Jack with you now?”
“How are his sleeping habits any of your goddam business? Goodnight.” She hung up.
I dialed her number again. She answered on the third ring. Progress.
“You're not a very sound sleeper,” I said after she picked up.
“You must believe in a god then, because only a greater power can save your pressed ham after I'm through with you. What part of goodnight don't you understand?”
“Ellie, is Jack with you now?”
“What are you, a perv?”
“I didn't ask if th
e two of you were playing patty-cake in your birthday suits. Just answer my question. It's important.”
“No! He got some call from the west coast about fifteen minutes ago; campaign troubles or something. He took it down in the hotel lobby. Oh wait, here he is now. You know, you have a lot of ner...”
I ended our pleasant little conversation before she was able to pronounce nerve, and didn't return Thanks until after I hung up. Not that I intended such gestures of ingratitude, but the pains of a stab wound or the fact that I was being followed by an unknown assailant didn't put me in the best frame of mind. The blades sting hurt like Napoleon's ego after Waterloo. I stared at my own shadow for a few seconds collecting my breath; the same silhouette that the Chrysler's headlights cast into the seat in front of me.
“Joshua, you don't look so good.” Leah's eyes again.
“I'm fine. The pain killers haven't kicked in yet. Just keep driving.”
“Who the hell is Jack Hoskins?” Richie elaborated on his earlier unanswered question, making sure to touch on religion, just to get the detail right.
“I'm not completely sure at the moment. It's kind of a long story. And after calling a contact, I'm probably wrong about that.”
Penny stroked my arm with a subtle gentleness that not only contrasted, but for a moment drowned out our tribulations. “Forget your college friend. He isn't worth this. Let whoever that man is back there have the fugitive, if that's what he wants.”
“He'll kill him. That's the only reason I'm doing this.”
HEY, WHAT ARE YOU GUYS TALKING ABOUT UP THERE!? IS IT ARNIE THE HAMMER!? CAN YOU SEE A HOOK FOR A HAND!?
“Maybe he will.” More gentle patting (and total callousness to the fate of the ranting fugitive in the trunk). “But we really need to get you to a hospital.”
Leah added: “It's time to come clean. I say we dump the problem child and roll.”
I CAN F-ING HEAR YOU! Alex beat his fists against the back of my seat.
Penny cried: “Soap, douche-bag!”
And Leah, just to drown out his noise, knobbed Man! I Feel Like a Woman back on its one good speaker. And here I'd always thought of AC/DC, Highway to Hell, as the perfect car chase soundtrack.
Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye (Wrong Flight Home, #2) Page 31