Deadly Blessings

by Julie Hyzy

  With a short sigh, as though impatient to get moving, I opened the file.

  A blank page stared up at me.

  I looked at Bruno. “What is this?”

  “I guess you could call it my version of tabula rasa,” he said. “A blank slate.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  Beads of perspiration burst out from under my arms, and down my back leaving trails of sweat that suffered immediate chill, despite being covered by my big down jacket.

  “No,” I said, unable to come up with a better response. “I don’t.”

  “I know.”

  “You know … ?” I asked. “What?”

  “I know why you’re here.”

  The room became close all of a sudden. From the look in his eyes I knew he didn’t mean for the supposed trade. I was momentarily speechless.

  “Give me your recorder.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t play coy, Alex,” he said. “You’re not good at it.”

  I moved, bumping the chair, the sound of the heavy wooden seat sliding against the tile, too loud in the small room. How did he know about the recorder? Or could it be just a lucky guess? Bluff time, I thought. This meeting had gone way off track, and I knew there was no redeeming it. Not at this point.

  “I thought we were here for a trade,” I said, keeping my voice even. “You obviously have some other agenda going on. And I don’t need to be part of it.”

  “Sit down.”

  “Sorry,” I said, moving again toward the door. “Give me a call when you’re ready to do business. This has been a waste of my time.”

  All I could think of was getting the hell out before Ro came back.

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious?” he asked, as my hand grabbed the inner doorknob.

  I turned. “About what?”

  “About how I knew you were planning to tape our conversation?”

  I had enough. Time to go. I thought about Rico and his buddies outside. Which was the frying pan and which the fire? I wondered. I’d take my chances and beat a path to the car. And I still had Jeff as a backup. If worse came to worse, he could call for help.

  I jerked the door open and was immediately halted in my tracks. Sophie, her bright blue eyes wet, and surrounded by circles of red welts, stood before me, blocking my path. Ro loomed behind her, giving her a shove that brought me back into the room, stumbling backwards.

  I flashed my attention towards Bruno. He hadn’t moved; his large arms still rested on the table, he watched me with interest from his chair. He’d lit another cigarette and puffed on it, the picture of relaxation. He oozed serenity. Of course. He held the cards now.

  I’d been a fool.

  “Now that’s loyalty, Alex,” Bruno said. “My dear child, Sophie, came to visit me this morning at my parish, so convinced of my innocence, so willing to protect me, that it took almost no effort to pull details of your plan out of her.”

  She’d been crying quietly, with soft ragged pulls of breath, but when Bruno spoke, she began to blubber in earnest, sobbing out an apology. Till Ro clamped a big hand around her mouth.

  “One more yelp out of you and I’ll off you right here. Understand?”

  Her bright blue eyes widened over the edge of his calloused hand. She nodded, and when he let go, she hiccupped softly, her gaze flicking in fear toward the gorilla-man with every inadvertent sound she made.

  Bruno pulled himself upright.

  “You thought you were so clever, didn’t you? I warned you, didn’t I? You could have taken the information …” he tapped the folder again, “… the real information—when I offered it. Taken it freely and lived a long happy life in the company of both your families. But you couldn’t walk away, could you?”

  I’d expected to be right about Bruno. I’d expected him to play into my hands just like bad guys do in books and movies. To give me Lisa’s head on the proverbial silver platter, just because I asked nicely. But I wasn’t any type of private investigator, and I’d blown it. The elation I hoped for when this story broke seemed almost a childish dream, an expectation that because I wished it, it would be so.

  “There are too many people who knew I was coming here,” I said, conjuring up as much boldness as I could manage. Hearing the tiny tremor in my voice. “I was the voyager.”

  “What?” he said, his face twisting into a puzzled frown.

  “Voyager” had been our emergency word for the no-tell motel stakeout last night. I never thought to come up with a new one for today, so smug with my own cleverness. So sure that everything would go just as I intended it. But all of a sudden the water swirled over my head. I was in too deep to get myself out. “Voyager,” I said again, more clearly this time, and louder. “I’m the one who ventured out here. But lots of people know about it. It would be a mistake to hurt us.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “There’s a plan.”

  “What about the priest from this parish? Doesn’t he know we’re here? Won’t that raise questions?”

  “He’s on vacation, as a matter of fact,” Bruno said, a grin starting, his wide, full lips spreading to reveal tobacco-stained teeth. “Left me to look after the congregation in his absence,” Bruno said standing now, his gaze flicking over my head again. “Rodero?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Perhaps you’ll relieve our reporter friend here of her recording device.”

  Ro leered, stepping around Sophie reaching for me. I moved back, grabbing my purse.

  “Okay,” I said, “don’t touch me.” I pulled my handheld tape recorder out from the side pocket. “There. You happy?”

  Bruno picked it up, pressed a few buttons and we all heard a playback of the last several seconds conversation. Nice and clear. He handed it to Ro, who smashed it in half against the corner countertop.

  “Did you really think such a crude attempt to trap me would work?” Bruno asked, shaking his head, smiling in a way that made me want to tear at his face. He made a “tsking” noise, then turned back to Ro. “Now let’s make sure she isn’t carrying any other surprises.”

  Ro came at me, wearing the first grin I’d ever seen on his bruiser face. I dodged around the chair, keeping it between us.

  Bruno made the “tsking” noise again.

  Anytime now, Jeff.

  Ro made a move to his left. Reacting, I ducked to his right, but he’d faked me out. He nabbed my arm almost effortlessly, dragging me past the chair, which toppled to the ground with a wooden clatter. Tight, in a vice-grip, I felt the squeeze of his fingers into the fleshy part of my upper arm, but I bit my lip rather than cry out.

  Holding me high enough that I had to stand on tip-toe, he used his left hand to roam. I tried to distance myself from his thorough search, his rough groping. I squirmed, keeping my eyes averted, fighting hot stinging tears of frustration as his big hands explored, squeezed, and wandered. “There are parts of this job I really enjoy,” he whispered, close to my ear.

  Like a trapped animal, I fought, my arms and legs flailing out, scratching, kicking, screaming. But with my every movement, his grip got tighter, his behavior more cruel, until he swung me out, crack-the-whip style, throwing me tumbling backwards over the fallen chair.

  I started to scramble up, but Ro grabbed me again. The right side of my face caught the edge of the table as he pulled me roughly to my feet. My flesh scraped against the metal corner and I winced at both the sound of ripping skin, and the searing pain that followed almost immediately. Warmth poured out from a gash on my cheek. I reached to touch the tender area, but Ro pinned my arms.

  He held me close enough that I felt his hot breath on my neck. My fighting had no effect on the steadiness of his breathing and I had no hope against him. I clenched my teeth, enduring violation like I’d never known before, watching long viscous drops of my blood leak to the floor.

  When his hands fumbled at my breasts again, all I could do was hope that the microphone’s miniscule
size would prevent its detection. “Okay. Enough already,” I said, fighting harder, trying to keep his fingers from exploring beneath my clothes. “How many times you need to check the same place?”

  Bruno watched the skirmish with wide, eager eyes, pulling his hands out from beneath his robes as Ro finally released me. I glared at him, taking deep breaths to keep control. Where the hell was Jeff?

  “Were you able to get in touch with Emil?” Bruno asked Ro, as the big guy pushed me aside to begin searching my purse. He pulled out latex gloves to do the job, the implication of which frightened me more than anything so far. I held my breath, and took my seat again at the table, blocking Bruno’s view of the bag. C’mon Jeff. Bruno knew I was no smoker. The fake cigarettes would be a dead giveaway.

  Sophie had been terrified into silence, it seemed. She sat in a far corner chair, watching us, abject horror frozen on her pale face. I turned away from her, angry.

  Not angry. Furious.

  Ro stopped pawing through the bag’s cavernous interior long enough to reply. “No answer at the rectory.”

  Bruno stuck a cigarette between his lips, pulling the Sacred Heart of Jesus lighter out of his pants pocket in a smooth motion. “Damn idiot. Probably soused up again.” He stood with his back to us, as Ro resumed his examination. He spent extra time on a couple of items that seemed to interest him: my mini-flashlight, a pocketknife, and some dental floss. Great tools to affect an escape, I thought wryly.

  I pulled a few tissues out from the side pocket, shooting Ro a look that dared him to stop me. They were soaked within seconds of contact with my cheek, but I held them there, unwilling to get up to look for replacements until Ro finished his search.

  The fact that Jeff hadn’t made an appearance, despite my obvious use of the word “Voyager,” hadn’t escaped my notice. Maybe he was taking his time, calling in the police … but maybe they couldn’t just storm in. Some law or regulation might prevent their involvement without probable cause.

  Still.

  “It’ll be dark enough soon,” Bruno said, almost to himself. “The devil does his best work in the dark.” His head snapped Ro’s direction, “I want her car brought around the back. We’ll need it later.”

  Ro dug my keys out, and shoved them into his pocket. “Yes, sir.”

  “Make sure no one sees you. Anybody else beside those gangbangers out there?”

  “Yeah. Some white guy in a van sitting out there, smoking.”

  Bruno’s eyes flashed toward me. “Friend of hers?”

  Ro considered that. “Nah. Cable guy or something. I had Rico and the boys chase him off.”

  My heart dropped.

  Jeff.

  Gone. And probably before there had been any indication of trouble here. My mind blanked for a long moment.

  Ro spoke up again. “We could get Rico or one of them to drive the car, you know.”

  Bruno stared at us without expression. “No, I don’t want them involved in this one. Too risky. They’ll sell us out in a heartbeat when they get picked up for something else. I’ll tell Lisa to stop for Emil along the way.”

  From the way Ro nodded, my big mistake became obvious. It was Bruno who called the shots. Not Lisa. She was his pawn, rather than the other way around. I closed my eyes in frustration. I’d let my Catholic-ness blind me. How could I have been so stupid to have missed it?

  “Put them in the basement for now,” Bruno said, glaring at Sophie and me. Our eyes locked for a moment and he grinned malevolently.

  He made a sign of the cross in the air over our heads. “Not to worry,” he said, his eyes triumphant, “At your funerals, I will be certain to speak of your glory. Because, as Peter says, when the Shepherd appears you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  From my vantage point in the back seat of Lisa’s SUV I couldn’t see the speedometer, but I could tell from surrounding traffic that she stayed well within the posted limits. She religiously used her turn signal whenever changing lanes and maintained a sedate pace on the right, switching only to the left when it became necessary to pass either a truck or an elderly driver going twenty miles under the limit. I suspected she was less concerned with qualifying for a safe driver’s award than she was hoping to remain unobtrusive and avoid getting pulled over. Considering that we didn’t crash, get a flat tire, or that the steely gun Ro pointed at us from his twisted perch in the SUV’s passenger seat didn’t go off, the drive south on the Dan Ryan expressway was uneventful.

  Uneventful.

  The word stung.

  Because all of a sudden, it described my life. All too well.

  I spent the ride with a wad of napkins taken from the church kitchen pressed against my cheek, staring out the side window, seeing nothing but the barrenness of the landscape as a backdrop to the barrenness of my life. Wondering at what could have been. Replaying old regrets—so many. Too many. Wishing I’d done more, seen more, experienced more.

  The cloud cover from the afternoon had cleared and pinpoints of bright light twinkled above. A full moon, in such sharp focus that I could see the man in it watching over us, glinted almost silver. I breathed a shuddery sigh and wondered if I’d ever see the sun rise over the lake again.

  I kept a Mark Twain quote taped to the wall next to my desk and I thought about it now. He once said that we would be more disappointed by the things that we didn’t do than by the ones we did. He urged us to sail away from the safe harbor, to explore, to dream, to discover.

  I’d always pictured myself as an eighty-year-old woman in a rocking chair, looking back on my life with a smile of satisfaction. Eighty always seemed so far off. So distant. I was convinced I had plenty of time to make those discoveries, to take those chances.

  I felt my life rush forward now, like the surroundings outside the window. Blurred, bleak, forgettable. Biting my lip, I fought the hard lump of ache working its way up my throat, lodging hot behind my eyes.

  They’d do an autopsy, of course. A mental image of my naked body lying cold under harsh lights made me take a sharp breath. Then the scene in my mind shifted, and all I could see were my parents standing over me, Lucy asking what happened. My face caked with dead person makeup, my lips sewn tight, and my hands crossed on my abdomen. I saw the people come visit. I watched the mourners asking why and how. And—William. I never took that chance, either. I felt stabbing pain from all I missed. And in that moment I knew Mark Twain was right. I regretted all the chances I hadn’t taken, far more than any mistakes I’d made. Except this one, of course.

  Lisa drove with intensity. Her face flashed bright-dark, bright-dark as we zipped south beneath the pattern of street lights. Apart from an occasional glance at her rear view mirror, presumably to verify that Emil still followed in my Escort, she barely moved, and didn’t speak. Her hands, gripping the steering wheel at firm ten and two o’clock positions and her ramrod straight back, confirmed what I picked up earlier in her discussion with Bruno. She wanted no part of this excursion.

  When Lisa and Emil first arrived, Ro and Bruno shepherded us out the back door of the church, through an alley of darkness, to three waiting cars.

  Ro pushed us toward Lisa’s deep green Mercedes SUV. At his shove, Sophie stumbled, skinning her knee on the ground. “Stupid bitch,” Ro said, pulling her up by the collar of her jacket and throwing her into the back seat.

  We looked like a troupe of stage players, performing in a lonely circle of light from one faint street lamp above. Desolate, and quiet, I hoped for a curious neighbor to come investigate what these white folks were doing in a back alley at night. But nothing moved, except for an occasional dark shadow, scurrying and scratching, near the bases of the garbage cans.

  Lisa wore a black ensemble. Shoes, pants, shirt, jacket. With her dark hair she was nearly invisible in the low light. “Hey!” she said, her voice loud, but swallowed up by the area’s emptiness.

  Just as he grabbed me, Ro stopped.

 
“No way,” Lisa had said to Bruno. “They are not getting in my car.”

  I’d hoped Sophie would take advantage of the distraction and make a break out the SUV’s far door. But instead she just sat there, mouth agape, unable to do more than watch and breathe, little post-cry hiccups punctuating the silence as Bruno raised an eyebrow in Lisa’s direction.

  If Ro hadn’t held me by the arm, I would have run. Don’t get in the car. Don’t get in the car. I repeated it to myself like a mantra.

  “I’ve decided. You will drive. Emil will follow.” Bruno’s voice took on a tone of authority.

  She blinked at him several times. “What about you? What will you be doing?”

  “I have a pressing dinner engagement with the Cardinal in …” he checked his watch, pressing a small button to make the face light up iridescent green in the dim light, “thirty minutes.” He held up accompanying fingers. “Two very good reasons. My parish needs assistance and I need an alibi.”

  Lisa ran her hand back along her head, to pull her hair back with her left hand, holding it pony-tail fashion behind her. Not the move of a power-wielding madame—this was a nervous gesture. “I’m not going to be part of this,” she said. “I never said I’d be part of killing anyone.”

  Bruno stepped close, invading her space. “You …” he said. Lisa was not a small woman, but Bruno loomed large before her. His big fingers caressed, moving from her temple along her hairline, down into the neck of her open jacket. They lingered there, and he smiled. “Do you remember what happened last time you told me ‘no’?”

  In the night glitter light from the pale overhead street lamp I watched Lisa’s gaze change. I’d swear she went from rebellion to hatred, before finally dissolving into resignation. Her hand dropped from holding her frizzy hair. He tightened his fingers at her neck.

  “Do you?”

  With a nod, she broke away.