“Fatso ain’t gonna do nothing!” Ski Mask Guy cackled. “He’s just watching!”
“Watching,” Doug muttered. “Not doing.” And he lifted the laptop and swung it hard against Ski Mask Guy’s head. When the freak sprang back, Doug hit him again, shouting, “Let her go, you son of a bitch!” And he did, slamming a shoulder against the back door and tumbling from the car. Doug’s laptop flew out too, shattering into a million pieces against the pavement. I could breathe, but barely, and looked into the empty backseat, where the devil mask grinned slyly up at me.
I gaped into the rearview mirror as Ski Mask Guy rolled to his belly and his head popped up.
I caught a glimpse of a face that was melted.
It was branded with a reverse R, just like the cake pans from Rispoli & Sons.
• • •
And then I told Doug everything.
I told him about the scene at my house, and my family that had now been missing for more than two whole weeks.
I talked about Uncle Buddy, Ski Mask Guy, Detective Smelt, and Club Molasses.
I explained the Outfit, ghiaccio furioso, and especially the notebook.
At the end, I sat back against the driver’s seat and closed my eyes, waiting for the disbelief, the questions about my sanity, maybe a polite query about possible drug use.
Except Doug believed me.
He believed every word I said.
In fact, out of the six and a half billion people who populate the earth, Doug Stuffins was precisely the right person to believe me. He had spent his life memorizing, internalizing, and vicariously living through stories on film that were as unbelievable as mine, and even more so, and they were alive to him just as mine was now. If I had told him Ski Mask Guy was a carjacker, Doug would have scoffed, but explaining that he was an insane masked assassin trying to kill me for an Outfit instruction manual that I found in a steel briefcase hidden inside a buried speakeasy was completely believable.
We were parked at the Superdawg Drive-In, and Doug stared at the demonic mask in his hands, saying quietly, “It all makes sense now.”
“What does?” I croaked, holding ice against my neck.
“Like you said, my destiny . . . what I was born to do and meant to become.”
“Who?”
Doug turned to me with a look of certainty. “The sidekick.”
“The what?”
“The sidekick. Robin to Batman. Doctor Watson to Sherlock Holmes. Tom Hagen to Michael Corleone . . .”
“Whoa, wait a minute,” I said, sitting up.
“Don’t you see?” Doug said. “I’ve been writing my life all wrong. I cast myself as the hero when I’m actually the loyal and able wingman with a quick mind and the intellectual resources, i.e., a brain brimming with movies, to help solve any problem.”
“Doug, this isn’t a movie . . .”
“I know it’s not. It’s real life, finally.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I can help you. I need to help you,” he said, his words both a promise and a plea.
The idea of help was so foreign to me, so utterly unavailable, that I had forgotten how badly I yearned for it. There was nothing adventurous about the bloody web I was caught in, nothing exciting about the black void my family had disappeared into. I was trapped all alone inside my reality and had ceased hoping that it would ever be any different. But now Doug was offering to pierce that sick bubble and join me. I doubted that he could help—I doubted that anyone could help me besides myself—but I didn’t want to be alone anymore. “You can’t tell Max anything.”
“I won’t, I swear.”
“As long as I’m confessing, I . . . I think I might love him. Maybe.”
“Yeah,” Doug sighed. “Me too.”
There was a pause between us, and I glanced at Doug inspecting the devil mask. “Doug . . . are you gay?”
“I don’t know yet. I might be,” he said. “Age sixteen totally sucks when it comes to absolutes.”
“But you just said you love Max. That sounded pretty absolute.”
“No I didn’t. I said ‘me too,’ in agreement with your ‘maybe.’ What I meant is that I have a somewhat murky and as yet undefined feeling for him.”
“But you also like him as a friend, right?”
“Of course! You and Max are my . . . ,” and he stopped before saying “only friends,” and stared at the floor. When he looked up, there was certainty in his eyes, and he said, “If I were the sidekick, do you know what my advice would be?”
“What?”
“That it’s time to confront your enemies. You’ve been chased enough,” he said. “Remember when we watched Shane? How Alan Ladd finally straps on his six-shooter and faces down the bad guys who have been giving the innocent farm family shit for two hours? Remember The Pope of Greenwich Village with Mickey Rourke?”
“And Eric Roberts,” I said, seeing what he was leading to.
“At the end, Mickey Rourke walks into the mob boss’s private club and tells him to go bite himself because there’s nothing else he can do. But at least it’s something.”
I thought of Uncle Buddy at my house and Detective Smelt at Twin Anchors.
They didn’t know where I was but I knew where they were.
Just like that, Doug had given me an idea.
Maybe Batman was onto something with the whole sidekick thing.
20
THE MORNING OFFICIALLY BEGAN with sunlight tiptoeing through the caged windows of the warehouse, throwing crisscross shadows on the cement floor, but by then I’d been up for hours. Waking early is what I do and who I’ve become out of fear and necessity. My brain, which clicks off at night like a low battery and pops back on when it’s recharged, is especially active at the very start of a day. Conscious while the rest of the world sleeps, I make decisions, filter facts, and steel my gut for what lies ahead.
Today I began at four a.m.
I did a hundred push-ups on the cold floor and a hundred sit-ups.
Afterward I cracked the notebook, searching for guidance.
First I learned that the Bird Cage Club, where I was scheduled to meet Knuckles and his counterpart, Strozzini, was located at the very top of an old skyscraper in the Loop, on the thirty-third floor. It provided a general location (but oddly, no address) and a warning—never enter through the main entrance, only through a Capone Door hidden in the adjoining barbershop. Next, I studied the chapter titled “Loro—Them,” which explained in detail the many different groups regarded as a threat to the Outfit and how to avoid or neutralize them. It includes sections on the police (“Bribing a Cop”), the FBI (“Planting a Mole”), methods to avoid prison sentences (“Feigning Insanity and Faking Cancer”), dealing with rats (“Dead”), and on and on. Each section echoed Doug’s advice—when all else fails, take the fight to loro—them.
At seven a.m. I was parked down the street from my house.
Balmoral Avenue was deserted and the streetlights buzzed off.
The .45 was freshly loaded and I flicked the safety on.
The homes on my street are too tall and far apart to travel from roof to roof, like at the bakery. Cutting through the backyard meant an exposed patch of grass, and besides, there was no way I was going through those dark cellar doors again. In the end, there were no safe options to approaching the house—it was all risky—so I lifted the gun, crossed the street, and walked up to the front door. I was prepared to kick it off its hinges and enter swinging, but there was no need—it pushed open easily. I hadn’t been inside my home since I’d fled from Ski Mask Guy in the pouring rain. Now I had a gun, and more than that, a dangerously low tolerance for bullshit. Uncle Buddy and Greta had taken over our house—our damn house!—and they were now going to tell me everything they knew about my family, or else. Any anxiety I’d felt about shooting that freak had vanished like smoke up a chimney.
I entered imitating a cop flick, looking left to right with the .45 raised in both hands, and froze.
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What I saw was a funhouse déjà vu of the last time I walked through the door—complete disarray—except that there were no longer any signs of violence. The shades were drawn, curtains pulled, and the odor of old socks and dead cigarettes was pervasive. Yawning pizza boxes and greasy carryout cartons competed with crushed beer cans and empty liquor bottles, with ashtrays overflowing on every surface.
Just like last time, noise cut through the gloom.
It was clearly a voice; talking, stopping, repeating itself.
There was desperation in it, and it was on TV.
I walked over to the big flat screen where I’d watched so many movies with my family and recognized the scene immediately—one man, lanky and drawn, spread out on a chaise lounge, raging helplessly at a smaller, darker man who stood by watching coolly. The DVD was stuck, playing over and over again, with the man on the chaise saying, “I’m your older brother, I was stepped over! . . . I’m your older brother, I was stepped over! . . . I’m your older brother, I was stepped over! . . .”
I lifted the remote control and pushed a button, the scene went forward, and the smaller man said quietly, “It’s the way Pop wanted it.”
The lanky man clawed at the air around him, jittery and pissed, saying, “It wasn’t the way I wanted it! I can handle things! I’m not dumb, Christ, like everyone says! I’m smart . . . and I want respect!”
That scene in The Godfather, Part II, is the reckoning between the younger brother, who has taken control of the Mafia, and his older brother, who was passed by—the exact opposite of my dad’s and Uncle Buddy’s relationship. There was a stink of fantasy to it, as if my uncle had been obsessively staring at what he hoped for. I turned it off and the screen went black, further darkening the room. In the sudden quiet I heard the tink of cutlery. I checked the gun and moved toward the kitchen door, which I opened silently to Uncle Buddy sitting alone at the table, shoveling cereal into his unshaven face. A box of Froot Loops sat to his right, a half-drunk bottle of vodka to his left, and a burning cigarette in an ash-packed coffee cup before him. I pointed the gun at him and the motion drew his attention. He looked up, bleary-eyed, and said, “Greta left me.”
I held the kill-shot position just like I’d seen in movies, uttering the only thing that occurred to me. “Greta’s smarter than I thought.”
Uncle Buddy nodded slowly. “I deserve that,” he muttered, in a voice that was sincere and bitter and completely wasted. “I ruined it. I ruin everything.”
“Where are my parents and Lou?”
“You know what Greta told me before she took off? She said, ‘Even if you had gotten your hands on that notebook, you would have screwed it up!’ She spit at me and said, ‘Your old man and your brother were right, Benito . . . you were born to mix dough!’” He took a swig of vodka and said, “So, anyway. At least she gave me the ring back. I wonder where I put it . . .”
“Uncle Buddy,” I said, feeling the blue flame flicker and ignite, filling me from the pit of my stomach to the tip of my brain with a cold fury that strongly advised a bullet to his booze-blasted skull. The ghiaccio furioso was so powerful and alive that it threatened to take me over completely, sending sharp little electrical volts to urge on my trigger finger. Maybe it was because I’d once loved Uncle Buddy and now hated him, or because the terror he’d caused me now seemed so small and cowardly, but this time I held on to the cold fury and focused it behind my eyes, controlling it rather than being controlled by it. I said it again, “Uncle Buddy,” and when he looked up at me, what he saw looking back registered on his puffy face in an awful way.
“No, please,” he said, shaking his head. “Not you too.”
“Where are they?” I said, moving toward him. He shrunk back into the chair, cowering, until I was standing over him. “Look at me,” I said. “Look at me right now and tell the truth. You don’t have a choice.”
“I don’t know,” he mumbled at the table. “That dog, what’s-his-name . . .”
“Harry?”
“He was here, hanging around, like he was waiting for Lou.”
Or me, I thought, and I’d suddenly had enough of this mumblefest. I grabbed a handful of greasy hair and yanked it back until his unwilling eyes, wide and wet, locked on mine. “Where are they?” I said, so calmly that it sounded dead to my own ears.
He stared at me, and I saw what he feared most.
It was himself, not old and alone, but worse—young and alone.
It was Uncle Buddy, not hated, but forgotten.
He paused, jaw trembling, and said, “I swear I don’t know where they are! I swear to God!”
“What about the government? Did my dad make some kind of deal?” I said, remembering Uncle Buddy’s confrontation with him, how he’d implied that he had spied on my father’s voice- and e-mail.
Uncle Buddy was crumbling under my gaze, looking paler and more translucent by the second. His mouth was wet and sloppy when he said, “I picked up the other line at the bakery. There was a woman on the phone, real official sounding, saying something to your dad about ‘coming in safely’ and ‘guaranteed anonymity.’ And the letter . . . the letter was just a list of towns and cities . . .”
“Where we could relocate,” I said to myself.
“But the government?” Uncle Buddy stammered. “The government doesn’t take in witnesses by tearing apart a house like I found this place.” He was shaking now, sucking air like a beached whale, and said, “Please . . . I don’t know anything.”
“You know about the notebook,” I said, feeling frost on my tongue.
“My pop and Anthony, they used to have this weird language, like a pig Latin that wasn’t English and only sort of Italian,” he said, swallowing thickly. “They’d use it when they didn’t want me to know what they were talking about. Except one time, right before my pop died, I was hiding in the broom closet. And I overheard him and Anthony talking about it in plain old Italian, explaining that it contains potenza ultima . . . ultimate power.”
“What does that mean? Ultimate power?”
“I don’t know!” he cried. “Anthony was telling my pop he wanted nothing to do with it! But whatever it was, I wanted it! Oh God, I wanted it so badly!”
“So badly that you turned on us, even though we loved you,” I said. “You took over our home. You tried to take over our lives.”
Uncle Buddy stared with his mouth open and then said softly, “I wanted what Anthony has. Not just a family and a home, but power . . . what you have . . . the ghiaccio furioso. I thought the notebook would . . . that maybe it could . . .” And he paused, licking at his dry lips. I let him go and he slumped back, whispering, “I still want it.”
“What about Detective Smelt?” I said. “What about the freak in the ski mask?”
“I don’t know about any cop or freak. I’m the only freak I know.” Something clicked in his muddled mind, and he said, “Sara Jane . . . are you in danger?”
It was the first time I laughed in weeks.
The sound of it rolling from my mouth was strange to me.
There was no joy in it, only tired irony.
I wiped at my eyes and looked around the kitchen at filthy dishes, scummy counters, and molding food. The line of blood where Harry dragged himself into the basement was still there, dried brown on the tile floor. My uncle, who had once been my buddy but was now my personal Judas, took a swig of vodka and said, “Whoever they are, it must have been my pop’s death that brought them out of the woodwork.”
It was the first relevant insight he had. “Go on,” I said.
“That means they must have Outfit connections. My pop was ‘Enzo the Baker,’ ‘Boss,’ and ‘Biscotto’ to the mob, but to the rest of the world he was just a little Italian pastry maker down the block.”
Following his line of thought, I said, “Only someone who knew Grandpa was counselor-at-large would have known my dad was next in line, and that he would inherit the notebook.”
“Next in line, yeah. Notebook,
I’m not so sure,” he said. “I didn’t even know it existed until I overheard Pop talking about it. I finally confronted your dad . . .”
“At Grandpa’s funeral,” I said, remembering my dad dropping Uncle Buddy with a lightning left hook.
He rubbed his jaw absently. “Your dad admitted it existed. He told me Nunzio started it, Pop continued it, Anthony added to it, and that it was a Rispoli family secret, full of secrets. He was clear that no one else in the Outfit knows about it.”
“Unless someone does,” I said. “Who would it be, if someone did?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Like I said before, I don’t know anything.”
“Uncle Buddy, look at me,” I said, and when he did, he winced in pain but was unable to turn away. “Who would it be?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” he said. “Please believe me!”
Actually, I did. As he gaped up at me, I saw Uncle Buddy for what he was—a two-bit schemer who, through bitter jealousy, had helped tear my family apart. I was gripped by a pity that was equal to my anger, and I pushed him away, taking a final look around. “I’m leaving now. Either clean this place up or burn it down.”
“No, wait!” he said, lunging for me, grabbing at my arm. “I can help you, Sara Jane! Give me the notebook! If that’s what they’re after, I’ll be the target! Please!”
“Let go, Uncle Buddy,” I said, trying to pull away.
“Give it to me, goddamn it!” he shouted, tightening his grip and rising from the chair. “I want it! I need it! It’s my goddamn turn! It’s my—” And before he could tell me what else was his, I spun and cracked the gun against the side of his skull.
Uncle Buddy sat heavily in the chair and went face-first into his Froot Loops.
I lifted his head out of the bowl so he wouldn’t drown in sticky milk.
I hate him and hope I never see him again, but after all, he is my uncle.
21
SO NOW I KNEW that Detective Smelt and Ski Mask Guy were somehow Outfit connected. But I also knew (with Uncle Buddy as a prime example) that a connection doesn’t make a person part of the Outfit.
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