I jumped inside, clicked the seat belt, and pushed the remote control.
The garage door lifted slowly to rapids rushing down the brick alley.
The back tires spit smoke as I flew out of the garage.
And then I was speeding away without knowing where I was going, desperate to get away. My neck was raw and bruised, my forehead bore knuckle prints, and Harry was making a noise that sounded like his lungs were full of motor oil. The mini camera was on the seat next to me, sliding on leather, while my mind raced with the realization that someone-tried-to-kill-me-someone-tried-to-kill-me-someone-tried-to-kill-me! I flew through stop signs and bumped over curbs, my body racked with involuntary shivers. I needed to locate the odd inner calmness that had cooled my skin while I was kicking the crap out of the lunatic in my house or I was going to wreck the car. I pulled to the curb and rested my head in my hands, breathing slowly as the windshield wipers clicked at raindrops. All I had was the small purse that had been strapped across me all night holding a CTA card and my phone. When it rang I jumped out of my skin. I scrambled for it, pressed the green button, and said, “Mom?”
There was a pause and then a woman said, “Sara Jane Rispoli.” Not a query, but stating my name as a fact.
“Who is this?”
“Detective Dorothy Smelt,” she said. “Chicago Police Department. Are you all right, Miss Rispoli?” Her words were muffled and hard to understand, riddled with the static of a bad connection, which only added to the creepiness of the call.
“How did you know?” I asked cautiously.
“Someone called in a disturbance. Where are you?”
I was quiet because I was rattled and because the phone call confused me—how had she gotten my number? But then relief overcame suspicion since it was the police, an entire force dedicated to helping people, and no one needed help like I did. I was about to tell her when an El train rumbled past. It was too loud to answer the question, but that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that, bad connection or not, I could hear the same train on her end of the phone. I swallowed hard and asked, “Where are you?”
Pause.
Silence.
She cleared her throat, and said, “In my office. At the sixty-third precinct.”
An ambulance ripped past with its siren screaming, and I heard that on her phone, too. I looked up at an unmarked car creeping down the street toward me while an anonymous van pulled to a halt around the corner. Glancing into the rearview mirror, I saw a dark police car inching up behind me. I turned the key, popped the headlights, and Detective Smelt said, “Why did you start the car, Miss Rispoli?”
The jittery shakes I’d had minutes ago dissipated.
I was calm again, and also pissed.
I said, “You heard that, huh? Or did you see me do it?”
“I only want to help you, Miss Rispoli. Remain where you are.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said, dropping the car into drive. “I’ll wait right here for you to either kick my ass or kill me.” I leaned heavily on the gas as I fishtailed from the curb.
“She’s moving!” Detective Smelt shouted, and I realized other ears had been listening, too.
None of that mattered now.
All that mattered was speed and escape.
I flew past the unmarked car and van, both coming to life and going into squealing U-turns. The cop car lit up like a slot machine, its sirens beaming and blaring, and blasted after me. Streets in my neighborhood are thick with stop signs and speed bumps, and I ignored them all, Harry whimpering at each violent jolt while the Lincoln bounced and sparked. The other three vehicles were right behind me with the police car in the lead, so aggressively close to my rear bumper that I was sure he’d hit me at any moment. This was nothing like the countless car chases I’d seen in movies, those slick, choreographed scenes of airborne Chevrolets and slo-mo spinning tires; this was too fast and close and dangerous, the narrow Chicago streets lined with parked cars, the threat of collateral damage happening at any second.
I felt tears of fury stinging my eyes.
I also felt hyper-alive and totally in control.
I knew this old neighborhood better than anyone, and that my chances of escape were better behind the big old houses than in front of them.
I yanked the wheel hard to the right, gunning down the nearest alley.
Behind me I heard the squeal of brakes and tires while I sped straight for a dilapidated pickup. Almost every day, before the neighborhood rises or after it’s asleep, junk collectors wheel beater trucks from Dumpster to Dumpster, looking for recyclable metal. They perform incredible feats of balance, using bungee cords and rope to strap old bed frames, water heaters, giant bags of tin cans, and rusty hubcaps to the back of the trucks. The one I was bearing down on now at great speed was an acrobatic miracle—a pyramid of rolling junk parked right in the middle of the alley. I heard the scream of the cop car, looked back at it and the two others barreling after me, slowed just enough to encourage them to speed up—and then yanked the wheel hard left. The alley I entered was so tight that the Lincoln’s side mirrors sparked the brick walls. I’d made such a fast turn that the cop car never had a chance to brake, and the last thing I saw before speeding away were two guys in the pickup truck leaping out for their lives.
The last thing I heard was the collision.
It was cop car into truck, van into cop car, unmarked car into van.
It sounded like a calliope had exploded.
Almost immediately my phone rang, and I recognized the number as belonging to Detective Smelt. I ignored it, turning toward Lake Shore Drive, and my mind drifted to my family. Part of me wanted to pull over and weep at the horrible uncertainty of it all, but the other part of me, the one now in charge, knew that the time for weeping, if it ever came, would be only when I had answers.
I drove at the speed limit, using my signals, careful not to attract the attention of the cop cars lying in wait for speeders along Lake Shore Drive. I exited at Grand Avenue, passing throngs of people out on the town. The rain had stopped and it had become a beautiful night. After what I’d been through in the last several hours, it was surprising that the world was going on as usual. I proceeded southwest until the glitz of the Magnificent Mile faded. Streets became residential, then industrial, then mean and impoverished, and then I was parking in front of Windy City Gym.
Willy Williams lived behind it in a small, neat apartment.
I knew he would take me in, listen to my story, and give me shelter.
Now was the time to be around fighters.
11
THERE IS a rare anger that accompanies unwilling separation.
It’s an orchid of fury, sprouting in the stinking manure of a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence when normal existence is split in two—the side you loved that is gone and the side you now occupy that is isolated, strange, freakish, and alone.
You wait for the universe to right itself—you wait because you’re human and humans are innately optimistic—and then it doesn’t, and you feel like a sucker.
You are the original fool, a butt of nature’s large, cruel joke.
That’s when the flame begins to flicker, low and cold.
You’re not mad at the world and you don’t want to bluntly attack the innocent—no, it’s a sharp, laser-focused anger. The concentrated nucleus is narrowly defined to kick in the teeth and bust the bones of the specific people who did this thing to you.
I did not know for sure who those people were.
I did know that I would find him, or her, or them.
I also knew that one of my teeth was loose, Harry was shivering in my arms, and I was so oddly calm as I rang the Windy City Gym buzzer that I was probably in shock.
Footsteps echoed through the empty warehouse, a steel door on wheels unlatched and slid, and I heard Willy’s deliberate padding down metal stairs. An eye squinted through a peephole, more locks slid, and he looked me up and down through steel-framed glasses. After an examination of m
y bloodstained disco dress, fist-marked forehead, and throat decorated with a necklace of purple bruises, he said, “So. How was the dance?”
I dumped Harry in his arms, sprinted upstairs into the shadowy gym, and went directly to the nearest heavy bag. Its bulky form hung from a chain, swaying in a slow, threatening circle, and I began to hit it with bare knuckles. My arms shot from my shoulders as I circled the bag, throwing the oldest combination in the book—left jab, left jab, hard right, left hook—and felt tears mix with sweat until my hands were as bloody as my dress. Willy tried to stop me but I shoved him away, continuing to pummel leather until I couldn’t lift my arms anymore, then collapsed to the mat sobbing. Willy counted silently to ten and then said what he always said to a fighter who was down.
“Get up, Sara Jane.”
I did, slowly, and went into his arms. Willy patted my back until I was done crying, telling me whatever it was, it would be okay.
I stepped back, wiped at my eyes, and said, “I don’t think so. Not this time.”
Willy had lived a long, tough life, both in and out of the ring, and knew there were times that required action rather than reassurance. He led me across the gym to his tiny apartment, handed me clean worn sweats and an ancient satin robe that read “Willy ‘Chilly’ Williams” across its back, and motioned me toward the bathroom. When I emerged, scrubbed clean of blood but suddenly unable to stop shaking, a glass of hot sweet tea waited at a wooden table. Willy set down a slice of buttered toast and a bowl of cold green grapes, saying, “You need it. You’ve been running on all cylinders and now you’re out of gas.”
“Where’s Harry?”
He nodded at a threadbare couch where the little dog rested on a pile of blankets, his side wrapped perfectly in gauze and tape as only a good corner man could do. Willy nudged my shoulder gently and said, “Go on.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t trust yourself right now. Eat.”
He knew something I didn’t know because even though food was the last thing on my mind, I devoured it, along with another slice of toast and two more glasses of tea. When I finished, I quit shaking and started talking. I told him all that had happened, from the scene between my dad and Uncle Buddy to the terrible moment when I walked into my house to the confrontation with Detective Smelt. By the time I was done, the cold flame in my gut was burning brightly again. Willy rose from the table, opened a cabinet, took out a battered tin box, and removed a single cigarette.
“I quit twenty-five years ago,” he said. “But I always keep one on hand for emergencies.” He sat down, scratched a match, and lit it.
“What do I do now?” I said.
“You sure can’t go to the police,” he said. “I’ve known a lot of cops in my time, some good, some bad, some ten times more crooked than the crooks they’re supposed to catch. Whoever this Detective Smelt is, she’s not playing by any cop rulebook I ever heard of. She wants something and she’s obviously willing to break the law—hell, several laws—to get it. Seems like that thing is you.” Willy went silent, smoking and thinking, then said, “Thing is, police are a fraternity—they’re tight, and they talk about everything. The problem is that the good cops don’t know when they’re sharing dangerous info with bad cops.”
“So I can’t speak to any of them.”
“Too risky, at least for now,” he said, tapping an ash into a chipped coffee cup. “I’m more concerned about the freak in the ski mask.”
“Like I said, he was burly and he could take a punch . . . or at least a kick,” I said, suddenly recalling the first time I met Willy and how he described my uncle’s ability as a boxer to take a beating and keep on going. “Just like Uncle Buddy,” I said.
“What?” he said slowly. “Buddy?”
“He threatened our family, Willy. Today, at the bakery. He warned my dad not to get in his way, or else.”
“You didn’t see his face, Sara Jane. You don’t know for sure it was him.”
“But . . .”
“But nothing. Before you go accusing your uncle of . . . whatever . . . you better be damn sure he’s guilty. If he’s not, there’s no one, and I mean no one, you’re going to need more than ol’ Buddy.”
“Need?” I said, incredulous. “What would I need him for?”
“Listen to me, girl. Of course I know about the bad blood between him and your dad . . . but they’re still blood,” he said. “Buddy is your blood, too. The time may come when he’s the only one you can count on.”
“No, never. You’re wrong,” I said, shaking my head. “You didn’t see Uncle Buddy try to hit my dad at my grandpa’s funeral. You didn’t hear the oaths he swore against our family. Besides you, I’m in this all alone. So I’ll ask again . . . now what?”
Willy stared at me with his hands folded on the table like he was praying. A line of smoke snaked toward the ceiling as he said, “The worst thing I ever saw was my own child’s dead body. It isn’t natural, your baby dead before you. ’Course she wasn’t no baby. She was just three years older than you are now, nineteen.”
I knew that Willy’s daughter had died a long time ago but he never discussed her, at least not with me. Carefully, I asked, “How did she die?”
“Cars and alcohol,” he said, clearing his throat and adjusting his glasses. “When you see the body of someone you love who died too soon, you . . . die a little with them. You didn’t see any bodies in that house, Sara Jane, and you’re alive. So, what you do now is operate on the assumption that there aren’t any. You assume they are alive, too.”
“Then what?”
He shrugged, stubbing out the cigarette. “Find them.”
“How?”
Willy sighed and pulled a hand over his face, and I saw that he was an old man. “Tomorrow, my girl,” he said. “We’ll talk it out tomorrow.”
“Do you really think they’re alive?”
“I don’t know what to think because I’m confused and tired, and so are you.”
“I won’t sleep. There’s no way.”
“You have to, and despite what you think, you will,” he said. “The Crow’s Nest is clean, empty, and quiet. You have it all to yourself.”
The gym had been a factory a hundred years earlier. Back then, as laborers sweated over assembly lines, a boss kept tabs on the operation from a small wooden office suspended from the ceiling high above the activity—the original “eye in the sky.” That old office was still bolted to the roof, complete with large glass windows. There had always been a steady procession of boxers at Windy City over the years, pursuing careers as pro fighters—a few made it, most didn’t—all of them young and broke. Willy took pity on these up-and-comers and outfitted the office with a couple of old army cots, a floor lamp, and an ancient TV. The steel staircase and catwalk that once led up to it had been ripped down for scrap decades ago; a winch and pulley lifted the furnishings into place. Select fighters were allowed to stay rent free while they trained, as long as they kept the Crow’s Nest clean, used no alcohol or drugs, and mopped the gym every night. To reach it required shimmying up a long, knotted rope; once a person was inside, he could see everything, every corner of the gym, just like sailors who occupied a ship’s crow’s nest; thus the nickname. The boxers who currently occupied it were gone, fighting on an undercard in Granite City, and wouldn’t return for a week.
“Try to sleep,” Willy said. “We’ll figure out our next move in the morning.”
“Okay, Willy,” I said, rising from the table, suddenly so aching and bone weary that I was unsure I could make it all the way up the rope.
“I’m gonna move the Lincoln around back, out of sight,” he said, and I handed him the keys. Harry’s ears perked up at the jingle of metal and he whimpered painfully.
“I’d better take him along,” I said, lifting and wrapping him around my neck. “He might need me.” Willy followed me out to the gym and stood beneath the rope while I made the trip like an inchworm, Harry whining all the way. I pulled open the
trapdoor, clambered inside, and looked down at Willy, who waved up.
“Good night,” he said, his voice echoing softly around the vast brick room.
“Good night,” I said.
“Sara Jane?”
“Yeah?”
He wiped at his nose, sniffled, and said,
“Your world seems empty and broken,
but it ain’t completely true.
Even though you feel alone right now,
just remember that ol’ Willy . . .
“Well . . . what I mean is . . .”
“I love you too,” I said, and waved back before pulling up the rope and closing the trapdoor.
After Willy’s footsteps crossed the gym, everything was silent except for Harry’s labored breathing. I made him comfortable and scratched between his ears until he fell asleep. It was when I reclined on a cot and noticed the old TV that I remembered the mini camera from Frank Sinatra’s head. I took it from my purse and went to the television, which had a green glass screen set into a wooden cabinet, and looked more like furniture than electronics. Its dial spun to change channels, it had push buttons for volume, and a rabbit-ear antenna sat on top. The only nod to the twenty-first century was a DVD player attached to it. The mini camera had no accessories, but Lou taught me that almost all electronics are compatible despite their age, since a simple cable is still the heart of the technology—just find something that plugs into something else and it might work. I tried all of the DVD’s plug-ins, first the red, then the yellow, but it was the black that fit.
I turned on the television and its screen yawned and wiggled.
I flipped on the DVD player, and it whirred weirdly, trying to accommodate the camera plugged into its gut.
Finally I pushed Play on the mini camera, stared at the TV screen, and when it stopped wiggling, I watched someone punch my dad in the head.
Cold Fury Page 10