“I didn’t hear about it until the next day,” Max said. “I walked into the theater room and there’s Doug, working on his laptop like his fingers are on fire. I tried to talk to him about what had happened but he wouldn’t even look at me. He just kept saying it was urgent that he finish the screenplay.”
“Poor Doug,” I murmured.
“I warned Billy that if he goes near Doug again I’d kick his ass in a way he’d never forget,” Max said. “It was him and those morons he hangs with, all of them flexing and giving me the dead-eye. He said, ‘Oh yeah? Well you better start doing push-ups because I can’t get enough of that fat sack of shit.’” Max shook his head, and said, “Seriously, the first time I catch him alone, he’s dead.”
“Doug wouldn’t want that,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter. If someone doesn’t do something, Billy’s just going to keep abusing him. Sometimes violence is justified.”
And there I was, straddling the line between Willy’s philosophy, that fighting outside the ring only led to more violence, and my own reality, of having spent days on the street fighting to survive. Doug would contend that any type of physical confrontation, inside a ring or out, was wrong, but Max had a point—something had to be done to help Doug, and the first thing was to get him to talk.
“Where is he?” I said.
“Theater room,” Max said. He’s been there every day between classes, working like crazy on his screenplay.”
“I need to see him.”
“Sara Jane,” Max said, taking my hand and giving it a quick squeeze. “I’m glad you’re back.”
It was so much better than a hug.
Hugs are commonplace and benign; everyone hugs, from NFL players to enemies.
Hand-squeezes are one short rung below a kiss.
I turned away feeling strong and headed for the theater room. It was empty and dark, the light from Doug’s laptop piercing the gloom. I expected to see dead bags of junk food and killed soda cans, but the only sign that he’d been there recently was the glowing computer screen. I looked at the page and saw that the first half was dialogue between two characters.
GOOD KING DOUG
But you are too softheaded and without moral compass to lead a kingdom.
VILE LORD BILLY
And you, sire, are as disgusting and bloated as a stuffed toad!
GOOD KING DOUG
I would never raise a hand in violence. In this, I am true.
VILE LORD BILLY
You never raise a hand to anything! You sit all the day long watching while other men do! You are weighted to the throne by inaction and flab!
GOOD KING DOUG
But at least I wish no man any harm.
VILE LORD BILLY
A wish, too, is unmoving and unreal. It is fluff and cotton candy, of which you look as if you’ve eaten a metric freaking ton.
GOOD KING DOUG
But . . . but . . .
VILE LORD BILLY
Butt-face, you fat load! You fat effing loser! Why don’t you go watch another movie and eat another bag of Munchitos and then eat a bag of rat poison, you fat prick!
GOOD KING DOUG
You . . . you . . . are right, my lord. I’m . . . I’m . . .
I watched the words drift off and then resume not as dialogue but as disjointed thoughts that bumped into one another, crowding for space.
“. . . I’m better off dead, I’m better off dead, because Billy is right, I’ve always known he was right, I’m a fat piece of shit, I’m a fat effing loser, I can’t and won’t do anything, not even defend myself, not even stand up for myself, all I do is watch, I sit on my fat butt-face and watch life go by, I deserve to die, I stare at movie after movie because I’m useless and unequipped and scared of real life, so I’d rather not live, I’d rather die, and that’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to do it, I’m going to eat a bag of rat poison, and at least I will have done that . . .”
“What are you doing?”
I looked at Doug standing in the doorway. This was no time to act as if I hadn’t seen what I’d seen, and said, “Don’t do it, Doug.”
He walked quickly to the table and slammed down the laptop, mumbling, “That screenplay is private property.”
“It’s not a screenplay,” I said. “It’s a suicide note.”
“No, it isn’t,” he said bitterly. “The word note implies that someone will actually read it. I don’t have anyone who would care enough to do that.”
“You have me,” I said, feeling my throat tighten. There were gray rings beneath his eyes and he seemed looser and a size smaller, as if part of him had deflated.
He avoided my gaze, saying, “Who the hell are you? My little movie friend?”
“Not movie friend,” I said. “Friend, with nothing attached.”
“Except sympathy for the fat kid with a brain crammed full of stories about other people’s lives,” Doug said. “Well, save it for some other loser. I won’t need it anymore, and you and everyone else will be better off without me.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, shaking my head.
“No, you’re wrong!” he screamed, and it was the most life I’d ever heard come roaring out of him. “My parents are divorced, my pothead dad’s long gone, and my mom, who lowers a vodka bottle only long enough to tell me what a disappointment I am, is married to some asshole lawyer who hates my fat guts! I have no siblings or friends—nothing except movies, don’t you see? I have nothing, and you have everything!”
“No,” I said.
“You have great parents!”
“No.”
“A brother, a whole family!”
“No!”
“A home where everyone loves you!”
“No, damn it! I don’t!” I shouted, and broke into a crying jag that was like a tsunami in its force. It drew Doug back to the surface and he was silent. I wiped my face in my hands, pushed my hair behind my ears, and repeated myself. “Don’t do it, Doug.”
Quietly, with what sounded like real curiosity, he said, “Why not?”
“Because,” I said. “I can’t lose another person I care about.”
“Who else have you lost?”
“That’s my business, Doug,” I said, pushing away a stray tear. “That’s my life, not yours.”
He nodded slowly, studying the floor, and then looked me in the eyes. “You know why I loved that screenplay? The sincerity of the language. It might not be the greatest movie ever made, but Charlie Huckleman believed every word he wrote about nonviolence. There’s power in sincerity, Sara Jane. There’s real power in words.”
He was right—the words I’d read about my family had changed me forever. I said, “What do you want, Doug? If you could have anything, what would it be?”
“I want a life. I want a . . . purpose. Fep Prep used to be my refuge . . .”
“I understand. Really, I do.”
“And I want to be left alone so I can figure out what that purpose is. I just want Billy to stop harassing me forever.”
Staring at Doug’s sallow face, the edges of his mouth drawn down, I realized that I could help him—I could confront Bully the Kid, let my cold fury flicker and burn, and do what I was born to do. The problem was that I still didn’t know if I could summon it, or if cold fury just sort of happened. There was also the issue of Fep Prep—did I want to bring that part of my life here, inside my refuge?
And then a familiar lightbulb flickered and buzzed.
I remembered the notebook, my own personal Outfit instruction manual.
It was a loaded weapon, custom made for a situation just like this one.
All I had to do was make a phone call—I remembered one unlisted number in particular—but paused, wondering exactly what kind of force I’d be unleashing. The notebook made it crystal clear that there were no good guys in the Outfit, no thugs with hearts of gold. There were only enforcers who used car batteries and pliers on mopes, and killers who used knives, guns, and Lake Michi
gan on victims. On the other hand, the notebook’s instructions were precise, obviously designed to control its own power and reduce collateral damage. I’d made the decision to use it if necessary, and I couldn’t think a situation as dire as this one.
“Will you do me a favor?” I said. “Will you do nothing? For twenty-four hours, don’t do a thing.”
“What difference will a day make?” Doug said without a trace of hope.
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s just one more day. Promise me? As a friend?”
He was looking at the ground, pursing his lips, and when his head began to nod, I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around him. He didn’t cry, just put his head on my shoulder, and I felt his magnetic, overdue need to be embraced.
I was wrong about a hug.
It’s not commonplace or benign.
It sounds like a silly bumper sticker, but a hug can keep a person alive.
18
THE PHONE CALL was awkward, phlegmy, and weird, but at least it was short.
After school I headed south on Lake Shore Drive, past the museums, past Soldier Field, doubling back in case I was being followed, and I left sunshine behind as I slid down the ramp to Lower Wacker Drive. It’s a subterranean boulevard following the same route as Upper Wacker Drive—in effect, a double-decker street designed decades ago to help regulate traffic. There’s a third level that goes even deeper underground (my dad refers to it as “Lowest Wacker Drive”) but today I stayed on the second level. Lower Wacker is punctuated with nooks and crannies, abandoned loading docks and forgotten turnarounds, while the Chicago River meanders past only a dozen feet away. A car can pull into one of those shadowy spots and disappear not only from traffic but daylight itself. I found a dark little corner, eased the Lincoln to a stop, and got out. The river inched by on the other side of a low chain-link fence—the perfect place to make a call without a chance of being seen or overheard—and I dialed the number from the notebook. It started with someone hacking on the other end, really working something out from the back of his throat, and then a voice like wet gravel said, “BabyLand.”
I rechecked the number—it was correct—and then read the password. “Uh . . . Saint Valentine is a friend of mine?”
There was a pause and the voice said, “Be at the Green Mill in an hour.”
“Where’s the Green Mill?”
The answer was a wet cough with a slurp at the end, then he barked, “What, you ain’t got a map?” and hung up. I stared at the phone, which felt infected in my hand, silently thanked Al for dozens more, and whipped it into the river.
An hour later, after consulting an actual phone book, I stood in front an old-time cocktail lounge where green neon announced THE GREEN MILL. I pushed through the door and the bright afternoon was swallowed up in barroom gloom. The bar stretched from the front door all the way back and then made a sharp left and kept going. Tiny booths lined the wall, ancient sconces oozed pink light, and a bandstand stood empty at the back of the room. The bartender, bent over a newspaper, looked up at me disinterestedly and went back to the page. There were only two other people, a large broken-nose-looking guy on a stool staring hard into a glass of something brown and an old man parked at the bar in one of those golf cart–wheelchair things called a Scamp. My bet was on the broken nose, so I approached and said quietly, “Are you him?”
“No,” he said, picking up his glass. “I’m drunk.”
“Hey, Einstein,” the wet gravelly voice said. It was the old man in the Scamp, and he dipped his head at me. I walked down the bar and he said, “Take a load off.”
I climbed a barstool and looked around. “Can I be in here?”
He took a greasy fedora from his head, removed a previously lit, disgustingly chewed cigar from its band, and said, “How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
He snapped a match and lit the turd, blowing smoke through ancient yellow teeth. “Jesus. You’re younger than the other one.”
“Which other one?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, breaking into a coughing fit that shook his bulky frame like he was enjoying his own personal earthquake. I noticed then that he was even older than I thought, and a lot bigger. The hands he used to cover his mouth were as large as catcher’s mitts, the knuckles like red, broken walnuts. His face was mapped with a scar that began above his left eyebrow, traveled across the bridge of his nose, and ended just past his bottom lip. All in all, from the sickly pale skin to the pinkie ring the size of a meatball to the Sansabelt slacks and Velcro sneakers, he was pretty creepy to look at, much less talk to. When he’d cleared his lungs, he took another deep drag and said, “So who the hell are you and how’d you get that number?”
“It doesn’t matter where I got it,” I said, knowing I’d arrived at a make-or-break moment. Contacting the Outfit via the notebook had been a risk; if the criminal organization had suspected my dad was a rat, they might have been the cause of my family’s disappearance. I was aware that as soon I revealed my identity, I’d know what the Outfit knew, and I should be prepared to run for my life. Inhaling a deep breath, exhaling through my nose, I said, “My name is Sara Jane Rispoli and . . .”
“Whoa-whoa,” he said, lifting a massive palm and squinting angrily. “Rispoli? Anthony’s kid?”
I ran my tongue over my braces, working up the nerve, and swallowed once. “I . . . yeah, I am. Is . . . is there a problem?”
“I’ll say there’s a problem!” he barked. “Where the hell’s your old man? I been calling and calling, and nothing! He’s supposed to broker a thing between me and Strozzini and what, he takes off on a goddamn pleasure cruise or something? Who the hell does he think he is, Mussolini? And lemme tell you something else about your dad . . .”
He was leaning forward in the cart with his eyes bulging and the scar a deep red. I guess I should’ve been intimidated, but instead I was relieved—the Outfit was obviously unaware that my family was gone, which meant that it wasn’t responsible for their disappearance. On the other hand, it also meant I couldn’t ask Knuckles if he knew anything about Ski Mask Guy—there was no credible way to bring up a mysterious freak assassin without raising suspicion. And then I was hit by a speck of Knuckles’s stinking hissy-fit cigar-spit, and a cool, clear anger rose up inside. It had been three years since I’d experienced the cold blue flame, but when it began dancing in my gut, it felt as if it had been burning there my whole life. It rose and rose, and I seemed to inhale it into my eyes as I locked onto his and said quietly, “Stop yelling at me, old man.”
Something changed in his face; it went pale and slack as he and I shared a stark, vivid scene of the fear that was attacking him.
I saw a metal casket without flowers in a small, cold room.
I saw his funeral with no one in attendance but his own empty corpse.
He sat back slowly and whispered, “Yeah,” with an involuntary shudder, “you’re a Rispoli.” He coughed into his fist, displaying a big, creepy hand again, and said, “Dominic Battuta. Call me Knuckles.”
The blue flame huffed out and died as fast as it had appeared, and I had no idea what made it jump or where it had gone. All I knew was that it had gotten the old man in line, and that he was looking at me now like a rabbit in the carrot patch, staring at the farmer. “I know who you are. I know you’re the VP of Muscle for the Outfit, just like your dad and grandfather before you,” I said, repeating my lesson from the notebook.
“Some things are best left in the family. You should appreciate that,” he said. “What do you need?”
I was conflicted about what I was about to do, but certain that Doug would hurt himself, or be hurt further by Billy, if I didn’t. “Intimidation,” I said quietly.
“What kind of intimidation are you looking for?”
“What kind do you offer?”
Knuckles spread his arms wide and said, “On this end, we have mild harassment. On this end, beaten senseless.”
“What’s in the middle?” I sai
d.
“Crapping his pants.”
“Yeah, that one. And I need it done tomorrow. But look . . .”
“Hang on a sec,” he said, producing a scrap of paper. He slid on a pair of half-glasses, licked a pencil tip, and scribbled, murmuring, “To . . . morrow. Crapping . . . pants.”
“But I don’t want you to hurt the guy. Just scare him really badly. The person I’m doing this for is an advocate of nonviolence.”
Knuckles looked over the top of his glasses. “Talking to me about nonviolence is like recommending the veggie plate to a lion.”
“You have to promise,” I said. “Just scare him.”
“Okay, fine. No kneecapping. I’ll put my scariest man on the job,” he said. “But in return, you gotta do something for me.”
“What’s that?” I said.
Knuckles sighed like a dragon, blowing cigar smoke from his nostrils. He explained how his division was engaged in a bitter dispute with the other major division, Money, about getting paid. It had grown worse in the past several months since the FBI began investigating front businesses, trying to figure out what the Outfit was doing behind all those supposedly legitimate operations. “Like this place. The Green Mill was a front for decades. Supposedly belonged to a hood called ‘Machine Gun’ Jack McGurn, but Big Al was the real owner.”
“Is that right?” I said, looking around for the Capone Door.
“Tell you one thing. Ain’t no Feds snooping around BabyLand.”
Cold Fury Page 18