Maybe, I realized, the diner full of cops hadn’t been cops at all.
Maybe they were just normal folks having an early breakfast.
Maybe paranoia had transformed a concerned police officer sipping an innocent cup of coffee—one who could have helped me—into an imaginary enemy in blue.
I moved to the doors—they were locked from the outside—and saw the officer from Lou Mitchell’s headed wearily in my direction. He stopped and spoke to an EMT, pointing at the ambulance, and the EMT nodded. Now that I was seeing him with my delusion goggles off, he looked like a nice, normal guy, probably my dad’s age, probably even a dad himself. He removed his hat and scratched his gray head, still talking, then patted the EMT’s shoulder and continued toward the ambulance. I was so embarrassed to face him that I stood behind the doors practicing an explanation, then an apology, then a combination of the two. And then I heard something ring.
I peeked out and saw him flip open a phone.
He leaned against the ambulance door and answered it.
Tiny hairs on my neck stood up when I heard him lower his voice and say, “Tell Detective Smelt I got the girl.”
Detective Smelt.
The girl.
Me.
Something cold and furious flickered in my gut, moving me around the interior of the ambulance until I found what I needed and lifted it carefully. I lay on the gurney, pulled a sheet under my neck, and closed my eyes as he opened the door. He climbed in and stood over me, still on the phone. I cracked an eyelid and watched him twist the end of his mustache between thumb and forefinger, saying, “That’s right, five grand, in twenties. Don’t try to negotiate with me, moron, I’m the one who caught the prize. You tell Detective Smelt if she wants a discount, try the Dollar Store. If so, I’ll drop this little fishy in the Sanitary Canal where no one will ever find her.”
I squinted, watching him rock on his heels.
He was listening, smiling smugly.
He twisted the finger inside his nostril, inspected it, and put it to work in his ear.
“Way to go, pea brain, now you’re talking sense,” he said. “Right. One hour, at the Twin Anchors, Smelt’s home away from home. And dummy? Don’t forget . . . twenties. Crisp ones.” He snapped the phone shut, chuckling, and said, “Hey, wake up!” When I didn’t move, he gave my leg a shake. “Wake up, firebug! You and me are going for a ride in the squad car.” I remained still, my eyes squeezed shut, waiting for him to move closer, and he leaned in, saying, “Open your eyes, whatever your name is . . . Mary Jane . . .”
“It’s Sara Jane, asshole!” I said, sitting up and swinging an oxygen tank the size of a bowling pin. I caught him hard just above the ear, the tank-on-skull making a gong noise. He stared at me with a stupid look on his face, his mustache twitched once, and then he crumpled like a Chinese lantern.
I was off the gurney and on my feet before he hit the floor.
I peeked out the door to make sure no one had seen or heard anything.
Everyone was moving—firemen dragging hose, cops barking into shoulder-talkies, gawkers craning their necks—with the Lincoln parked on the other side of Jackson Boulevard, beyond the cordoned-off area. There was no way I would make it through the crowd looking like I did, from the weird old sweats to the bloody bandaged head. My only chance was an extra EMT shirt hanging in plastic, white and starched, and a cap that read “Chicago Fire Department Emergency.” I put them on, each a size too large, and then bent down and felt the officer’s pulse (thanks, Red Cross Club), which was strong. I’d watched enough crime flicks to know that there’s nothing worse for a cop than being disarmed, and no one deserved that humiliation more than this devoted public servant, so I plucked his gun from its holster and was going for the door when I spotted a pen and clipboard with fresh paper. It took seconds to scribble a message and pin it to his shirt—I’m a dirty cop who charges five grand to kidnap teenagers. Oh hey, where’s my gun?—and then I stepped carefully from the ambulance. There’s a movie Doug showed recently from 1970 called Little Big Man that takes place in the American West in the 1880s. In a scene toward the end, as soldiers attack a Cheyenne village, an old Indian chief who believes himself to be invisible walks through the chaos, completely unnoticed.
That’s how I felt now.
Action swirled around me as step by careful step I moved toward the Lincoln.
Seemingly unseen, I lifted yellow tape and climbed into the car.
It was after I calmed Harry and slid the key into the ignition that I heard someone yell, “Hey!” and turned to another blue cop, this one younger and much more intense. His uniform was tucked tightly over his wiry body and he removed his reflector sunglasses while leaning forward, Terminator style, inspecting me and the car. I pulled the cap low over my bandaged head and reluctantly rolled down the window. He looked inside the Lincoln, looked all around it, and then his concrete face broke into a grin as he said, “What year is this bad boy? 1964?”
“You mean the car?” I said. “Um . . . ’65.”
“Man, they just don’t make ’em like this anymore. Steel, chrome, and an engine powerful enough to fly a helicopter.” He crossed his arms and made a face. “Nowadays it’s all hybrid-this and electric-that. Sissy stuff. Gimme old-school, American-made every time. You know what I’m saying?”
“Oh, hell yeah,” I said, starting the car.
His face turned stony as he said, “Whoa-whoa-whoa, relax. Where do you think you’re going?”
“Uh . . . away?”
He grinned again. “Not unless you demonstrate this old monster’s horsepower.”
“Horsepower?”
“You EMT folks . . . always so damn cautious,” he said, shaking his head. “Come on, honey, peel out! Lay some rubber! Spin this thing!”
“Oh. Okay,” I said, squealing from the curb and shooting up Jackson Boulevard with the gas pedal on the floor. When I glanced in the rearview mirror, he was giving me a double thumbs-up. I blasted the horn in farewell and bumped through a red light, my heart beating with freedom. As I crossed the Chicago River, I rolled down the window and flung the cop’s gun into an eternity of brown water.
Most people consider delusions a bad thing and pop pills until they disappear.
In my case, paranoia saved my butt.
From then on I’d trust it with my life.
13
AN ELBOW APPLIED carefully to glass is the second best way to enter anywhere.
The best way is a door, unless you’re scared of who might be behind it.
There were two doors into Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries and I wasn’t about to use either one.
I cruised past for the third time, seeing the neon sign hanging unlit and gray, the interior of the place dim in midmorning sunlight. Even though I hadn’t spotted anyone—no cops, no Uncle Buddy—it didn’t mean they weren’t nearby, watching the front door with its jingly bell or the delivery door on the alley. Even worse, they could be lurking inside, waiting for those doors to open.
I pulled to the curb and stared at the place.
It hadn’t even been forty-eight hours since I’d discovered my home in shambles and family missing, yet it appeared as if the bakery had been out of business for a decade. I knew it would be closed and locked, but it was worse than that. The only way to say it is that the bakery looked dead.
It made me want to drive away and to keep on driving.
Except, like Willy said, I hadn’t seen any bodies.
I had to assume my family was alive, and I had to go in there.
Harry had begun to whine in a way that suggested a desperate need to pee, so I took a deep breath and climbed out. Just as I opened the back door, a haunting, jingling tune cut through the air, like a slow-moving ice cream truck calling kids with its siren song. Harry lifted his head at it, sniffing the sky, and then, forgetting his injuries, bolted from the car. He was so fast that I had time only to yell, “Harry!” as he hit the bricks, running hard, yowling at the top of his lun
gs. I ran after him, stopping at the crossroads of the alley, but he was gone. Dark clouds bumped into each other overhead, blotting out the sun, and I felt so alone that I couldn’t hold back tears. I wiped them away, looking up at the coming rain, and something caught my subconscious eye—a telephone pole with metal footholds. It climbed higher than the roof of Cofanetto’s Funeral Home, which sat hard against Lavasecco’s Dry Cleaning, which was next door to Rispoli & Sons Fancy Pastries. I climbed a Dumpster, grabbed a foothold, and when I was halfway up the telephone pole, stopped and scanned the alleyways, but no Harry. The idea that I had lost another member of my family was too much to accept, so I pushed it away, resolving to track him down later.
Truthfully, I was unsure there would be a later for him or me.
I pushed away that thought too, and stepped onto the roof of the funeral home.
From somewhere deep in the building I heard a pipe organ, low and sonorous.
I walked lightly over the pebbled roof, crouching as I moved to avoid being seen. I was four stories in the air, equal to or lower than the surrounding apartment buildings in a neighborhood where someone’s Italian grandmother was always looking out a window. Anyone on a roof would raise suspicion, but a teenager in a huge EMT shirt with a bloody bandage peeking out from beneath a cap was a 911 jackpot for a local snoop. I hurried across the roof of the dry cleaner, feeling a blast of heat filled with sour starch, and paused, looking over at the bakery’s glass skylight. It sat directly on top of the kitchen, which meant directly over the oven.
It was time.
I stepped onto the roof of the bakery.
Peering through glass, I saw only the square white tile floor below.
Just like in a caper movie, I quickly popped my right elbow off of the window. It splintered, shards tinkling to the floor below. I reached inside, unlocked the skylight window, and stuck my head inside, listening to the silence. There was no sound, no movement, only the hum of the big industrial refrigerator. Carefully, I held on to the window ledge, lowered myself down, and kicked my legs to get my body moving. The top of the refrigerator, my target, was about four feet away. When I was swinging like a trapeze artist, I gritted my teeth and let go, and was in midair when I realized that I wouldn’t make it. It was slow-motion desperation, like a baby bird pushed from a nest with no idea how to fly, my legs and arms flailing at empty space until I hit the hard tile floor.
I tried to scream but nothing came out.
The only sound was a wet-cement-bag noise when my body hit the ground.
I groaned and rolled onto my back, feeling like I’d just been hit by a school bus.
There was a limit to the physical punishment that one sixteen-year-old body could take, and I lay there with every muscle, fiber, and tendon in my body aflame, sure that I’d reached it. When I opened my eyes, I stared up at six letters stamped in heavy metal.
Vulcan.
I got to my feet painfully, holding my back like a retiree, while the oven loomed before me, its massive iron door and old-fashioned dials and gauges like something from a World War II submarine. It was really old—my grandpa’s father, Great-Grandpa Nunzio, installed it when he started the business in 1922, and it had been hard at work ever since baking cakes, pies, and cookies. Staring at it, I realized that I’d never noticed how massive it actually was—six feet tall, four feet wide, encased in white glazed brick, with the iron letters painted a fiery red. Unconsciously, like before a bout, I cracked all of my knuckles and reached for the door handle. As I pulled it down, the hinges complained loudly in the silent building, making me jump. It was dark inside, with all of its racks removed. I looked into it just as I’d been instructed and saw nothing but empty space, a deep metal cave.
My heart was beating against my chest.
I had no choice—I’d have to climb inside.
I took a breath, pulled myself up and in, and I fit.
It required crouching but I realized that if my lanky frame fit inside the oven, so could my dad’s. Tiny Grandpa Enzo would have had no problem, and even Uncle Buddy, if he figured out how to position his gut—but for what purpose? There was nothing to see, nothing hidden or out of the ordinary as far as ovens go. The burners were down there, ventilation up there, sides made of solid iron. There was a small lightbulb inside but it wasn’t lit. Quickly, quietly, I pulled it shut, the light popped on, and something clicked solidly into place. I pushed against the door, felt that it was locked, and my skin went cold with panic, flashing me back to being a small kid when I’d turned a delivery crate into a hideout. Once inside, claustrophobia had attacked my little mind and I was screaming by the time my mom pulled me out. Ever since, I’ve avoided tight, enclosed spaces. I shoved against the door again with no result, and that’s when I noticed a tiny red button above it. It had to be the release, so I pushed it.
The door did not open.
Instead, something began to rumble.
A moment later the world fell out from under me.
I screamed as the box of the oven plummeted, quickly and smoothly. The lightbulb dimmed and lit, dimmed and lit, and I was so freaked out by what was happening that I gaped at it like a hypnotized moth as it tracked my rapid descent. Finally I felt the box begin to slow, and when it stopped, the lightbulb popped on brightly. A vacuum of wind rose behind me, and the back of the oven separated top to bottom, like a small set of inverted elevator doors. I slid out into semidarkness, where, a few feet away, a heavy metal door sat in a brick wall. I approached slowly, squinting at words printed in gold paint that were chipped and worn.
CLUB MOLASSES
PASSWORD REQUIRED
Looking closer, I saw that the O in “Molasses” was a glass peephole.
I pushed open the door, which swung heavily on old hinges, and stepped inside a high-ceilinged, brick-walled room filled with stale air. A circle of natural light fell from somewhere high above. Squinting up, I saw that I was deep at the bottom of what, to the outside world, appeared to be the bakery’s smokestack. I peered through murkiness like a goldfish in dirty water, spotted a switch on the wall and flipped it, and time reversed itself by ninety years. Green sconces lit the walls while brass lamps with green glass shades burned at opposite ends of a long curved bar trimmed in leather. There were no barstools, no bottles or glasses behind the bar, only a long mirror stained with age that bore the words Club Molasses in curved golden script and my reflection staring back. Across from the bar was a raised, empty platform that I recognized as a bandstand; in front of it spread a parquet dance floor with a large CM set in an intricate pattern. One wall was stacked with dozens of old, empty barrels, one on top of another reaching high into the air like a rounded, wooden pyramid, each stamped with the image of a maple leaf and the words 100% PURE CANADIAN MOLASSES. I crossed the floor to a line of old-fashioned steel and wooden slot machines. I’d seen ones like them only in movies, and a place like this in one movie in particular.
Doug’s favorite, Some Like It Hot.
In the opening scene, two musicians play bass and clarinet in a speakeasy.
Secret nightclubs flourished during Prohibition, providing jazz, gambling, illegal booze, and stealthy good times to Chicagoans.
Later in the movie, the musicians witness the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, a bloody, real-life incident that happened in Chicago in 1929. Gangsters disguised as Chicago cops machine-gunned seven rival gangsters execution-style in a North Side warehouse. Speakeasies like this one, operated by those same violent criminals, were hidden in the most unlikely places.
In barely a whisper, I heard myself say, “Dad . . . what you didn’t tell me was a lot.”
Then again, I thought, he said I could handle whatever came my way and more.
That was good, because there was more, covered by a tarp.
It was a large, oblong mass, squatting in the shadows. I knocked my fist against it, hearing the report of metal beneath my knuckles. I lifted the edge of the material and saw thick tires, and then rolled the whol
e thing back, revealing a silver two-door convertible with its top down that looked more like a rocket ship than a car. It was wedge shaped—high in back descending to a pointed hood that bore the silver image of a horse kicking up on its hind legs. Carefully, I opened the driver’s side door to an interior of black leather that was thick and tight, punctuated by a five-speed gearshift edged in chrome. When my mom taught me to drive, she insisted that I learn how to operate a manual transmission like this one, her theory being that if I was going to learn to do something, I should learn it completely. I looked from an odometer showing a grand total of four miles to a speedometer showing a maximum speed of two hundred and twenty miles per hour to a box with a silver bow on the passenger seat.
I slid in and slid the top off of the box.
I lifted out an operator’s manual that read 2000 FERRARI 360 SPIDER.
I put it aside and removed a small plain card bearing a message in black ink.
It was in Italian and I inspected it closely, doing my best to decipher both the poor handwriting and the verbs. My lips moved as I read—
Caro Antonio—
Un piccolo simbolo per la nascita di suo figlio, Luigi. Un bambino maschile è il massimo regalo che un uomo può avere!
Fedelmente—
I Ragazzi
I read it again, not completely sure of my translation but sure enough that on the one hand, my head swam, and on the other, my blood boiled. Basically, I read—
Dear Anthony—
A small token for the birth of your son, Lou. A masculine child is the greatest gift a man can have!
Loyally—
The Boys
In the head-swimming column: Who were “The Boys”? Why were they loyal to my dad? And why had they given him a car for Lou? In the blood-boiling column: What did they mean that a masculine child is the greatest gift? Did my dad agree with them? And where the hell was my car? I looked at the manual again—2000 Ferrari 360 Spider, the year my brother was born—and remembered my mother saying how the Lincoln had been a gift from some “friends” to Grandpa Enzo for the birth of my dad. I understood now that if my dad had been born a girl, Uncle Buddy would be the one driving the sleek Lincoln convertible instead of the crappy red one. I didn’t know much about Ferraris other than that they were fast and expensive, which meant that “The Boys” weren’t just loyal, they were really loyal. I looked around, trying to figure out how in the world someone had gotten a car down here, and absorbed the forgotten quality of the room. It was like a museum that had been closed for a long time. Everything, including the twelve-year-old sports car that had never been driven, was dusty, unused, or antiquated.
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