by Dean Koontz
Grandpa looked up from the delicious chicken lasagna that Mrs. Lorenzo had brought with her in the move. “How could it have anything to do with Tilton?”
Shaking her head, frowning, Mrs. Lorenzo said, “That man.”
“The bombing was a nationwide story,” my mother said. “He’s a fugitive. Maybe I’m worth the job only because I’m the fugitive’s ex-wife. Maybe they expect I’ll bring in a lot of curious idiots who think I’m Bonnie to his Clyde.”
“I hate that movie,” Mrs. Lorenzo said, “except Gene Hackman. He’s going to be somebody.”
“Diamond Dust,” Grandpa said firmly, “isn’t a place that pulls publicity stunts. They’re serious about their music. Anyway, if that was it, then they’d want you only for the low-traffic nights.”
“I guess maybe,” she said, but she sounded doubtful. “How would a place like that even know about me?”
Grandpa threw up his hands as if in exasperation. “They saw you at Slinky’s or somewhere else and realized you far out-classed the venue. Don’t second-guess your guardian angel, girl.”
Saturday she went to the audition, expecting a piano player, but they gave her the entire band, which had come in early. The manager, Johnson Oliver, obviously hands-on in the right way, presented her with arrangements for the three songs they wanted her to sing and gave her plenty of time to look them over in a quiet corner. “Just get the sense of how we approach the music. The boys will adjust to the way you sing.”
She sang, and they adjusted, and she thought she had never been better. By the time she got to “Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy,” at least a dozen guys on the kitchen staff came out to listen, and they cheered her when she wound it up, and even the members of the band applauded.
The agent hadn’t mentioned that he would be there, but he was, and after he conferred with Johnson Oliver, he astonished my mother by bringing her an offer, right then, more than she’d ever imagined they would pay.
Her only remaining concern was that the owner might have ideas like those of others whom she’d had to fend off. She asked when she might meet the big boss, and Johnson Oliver, with whom she felt comfortable, said, “Young lady, I’m the new owner and manager—and with you on board, this place is going to be a great investment.”
Saturday night at dinner, Mom regaled us with the story, and I swear we could have put out the four candles on the table and just dined by her glow.
With so many rotten things recently behind us, I was happy for her, happier than I can put into words. If when I went to bed that Saturday night you had told me that I’d be walking in the morning, I might have believed you.
89
Sunday night, twenty-four hours after returning to the city, Fiona Cassidy sat on the edge of her motel bed, picked up the phone on the nightstand, and placed an out-of-state call.
With her long hair cut short and styled funky and dyed blond, with her peaches-and-cream complexion now bronze from hours under a sun lamp and then under the sun itself, she was confident that no one would recognize her as the bomb-maker in the photo that the police had released to the media. Using one of the three sets of false ID that Lucas had given her a month earlier, she’d rented a car and taken a room in a nondescript motel.
When Lucas picked up his phone three hundred miles away, she said, “They’re watching, sure enough.”
“How’s it work?”
She told him about the Ford vans.
90
Monday morning, Grandpa Teddy drove my mother to Woolworth’s to turn in her uniforms. She didn’t need that job anymore.
Shortly after Mrs. Lorenzo put me through my daily exercises, Malcolm arrived with his axe. If he knew about the modifications to the Steinway, he convincingly pretended to be surprised by them.
I wanted him to listen to a few numbers and watch me. I started with Fats Domino’s “Walking to New Orleans,” which moves easy, and then did Fats’s “Whole Lotta Loving,” which truly, righteously rocks. Neither of them called for that much pedal work, but then I finished with a swing piece, “Easy Does It.”
When I wrapped it, I didn’t look at him when I said, “Now let’s do a couple numbers together.” He named a piece, and we rode through it well, and I named a piece, and that one went all right, too.
After the last chords faded in the heart of the Steinway, I dared to look at him. “So how did I do?”
“You did great, fantastic.”
“Don’t blow smoke up my butt, Malcolm Pomerantz.”
“No, you were really good. I mean, you’ve been through hell and away from the keyboard, so it’s going to take time. I wouldn’t think you’d be this good, this soon, especially with those grab knobs to pull and poke.”
I nodded. “You want to go in the kitchen, grab us a couple of Cokes, and meet me on the porch?”
He shook his head. “Let’s do some more here.”
“We will. We’ll do more together. But right now, meet me on the porch with those Cokes.”
I wheeled myself through the front door. The Ford van wasn’t parked to the west near the Jaruzelski place, but to the east, near the Rakowskis’ house.
Malcolm brought two ice-cold Cokes, almost dropped one, snared it before it hit the floor, gave me the other one, sat down, and said, “I think my old man hit her.”
“Who—your mom?”
“She has this bruise along her jaw. But then I think she hit him back or first, or whatever, ’cause he has a black eye.”
“When did this happen?”
“Sunday, when I was in the garage. I’m always in the garage anymore. I’d be there all the time if they’d just move the car out and give me more space.”
“This ever happen before?”
“Not that I know about. But things change, things are always changing, and not for the better.”
The day was a repeat of Friday, so hot that the birds stayed in the trees or walked around in the yard in the shade of the big maple, pecking at things in the grass as if they didn’t really want to eat but felt they had to go through the motions.
“I can still play,” I said, “and I’ll get better, but I’m never going to perform in public.”
“Sure you will. That’s what it’s all about.”
“It better not be what it’s all about, because if it is, then I’m through.”
“What’re you saying? I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Those grab knobs don’t cut it when I use a hand. Can’t get the right performance that way. What’s it look like when I use my teeth?”
“What does it look like? What do you mean?”
“Suddenly you don’t understand English?”
“It looks okay,” he said. “It looks fine. It’s interesting.”
“As interesting as a monkey juggling?”
He glowered at me. “What the hell kind of thing is that to say?”
“I don’t want to be a novelty pianist. ‘Playing tonight, Jonah the Crippled Prodigy Bravely Soldiering Forward.’ ”
He hissed through his teeth. “Man, I really don’t like you when you put yourself down.”
“Well, you know, somebody’s got to do it. If I’m not hard on myself, Malcolm, who will be? It isn’t a good thing to be soft on yourself.”
“Who told you that?”
“Somebody smarter than both of us.”
“That could be almost anybody.”
“Exactly.”
In silence, we drank what remained of our Cokes, and then I said, “It’s not a bad thing, Malcolm.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“I’ve been thinking about Vermeer.”
“What about Vermeer?”
“How he was totally forgotten for two hundred years, and now everybody thinks he’s the greatest ever.”
“So you’re ditching the piano for a paintbrush?”
“If Vermeer had been a piano man, a performer, he’d never have been rediscovered two centuries after he died.”
“Man, you�
�re losing me.”
“He was rediscovered because he created something. You see? They didn’t dig him up two hundred years after they buried him, and he’s been walking around ever since. His paintings were rediscovered.”
“Believe it or not, I realized that.”
“If I can’t be a performer, on a stage in front of people, maybe that’s good, because maybe what I can do is write music. Create.”
“You mean write songs?”
“At least the melodies. I don’t know about the words.”
“You’re ten.”
“I’m going on eleven. And I don’t expect to have a hit tomorrow. It’ll take years and years to learn.”
“What kind of songs?”
“Rock ’n’ roll, I guess.”
“That’s what sells. No market for new swing.”
“Rock ’n’ roll is a place to start.”
“Maybe ballads, love songs,” he suggested. “Maybe blues.”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Country and western?”
I shrugged. “I don’t have anything against it.”
“Broadway show tunes?”
“Could be interesting.”
“Symphonies?”
“Well, maybe not symphonies.”
“Not until you’re twelve, anyway.”
“I’m no Mozart,” I said.
“I wondered when you’d start being hard on yourself.”
“Maybe I’m not anyone, not Mozart, not Cole Porter or Doc Pomus or anyone who can write good music. But I’ve got to try, don’t I?”
“You’ve got to try,” he agreed. “And you are someone.”
We went on like that for a while, and as he was about to go home, I said, “You have a penlight?”
“What do you want with a penlight?”
“I’ll tell you sometime. I just need one.”
“I can get you one.”
“That would be swell. Maybe tomorrow?”
“Yeah. I’ll get you one tomorrow.”
91
The following day, having the sutures taken out of my back hurt, though not as much as getting blown off my feet by a bomb. The doctor declared himself pleased with my progress, and I said that I was happy with it, too, though in fact I didn’t think I’d made any progress and didn’t expect that I ever would, at least not as far as walking was concerned.
With my father loose in the world, Grandpa didn’t want my mother taking the bus to work or walking alone any distance, and he didn’t trust the reliability of taxicabs. That same day, he fronted her the down payment for a used car, a 1961 Buick station wagon the precise soft brown of a chocolate Necco wafer. For a wagon, that car had cool body styling; and because my wheelchair was collapsible, Mom would be able to stow it in the back of the wagon and take me places with her.
Having been invited the week before, Mr. Yoshioka came to dinner that evening, bearing an immense bouquet of roses that must have been difficult to manage on the bus. He admired the Buick, which was in tip-top condition even though it had sixty thousand miles on it. Over dinner, when I suggested that he should buy a car for himself, he replied that he’d never had the time to take driving lessons.
“Besides,” he said, “I would miss walking to work. I have taken the same route for so many years that every building and every crack in the sidewalk and each of the many details along the way is like an old friend.”
“But when it rains, you wouldn’t have to get wet,” I said.
“Ah, but the rain is a special friend, Jonah. It has such a soft voice, and if you talk to the rain, it always agrees with anything you say.” He hissed like falling rain does, but he made a word of it: “Yesss, yesss, yesss, yesss. It cannot make the sound of no. The rain is a most agreeable companion.”
Mrs. Lorenzo clapped her plump hands quietly, quickly, as might a delighted little girl. “That’s such a lovely thought.”
Mr. Yoshioka was excited to hear about my mother’s new job, and he said that he would like to see her opening-night performance.
“You best wait a week,” Mother told him. “My rehearsal with the band is tomorrow. The first week, we’ll be on a kind of shakedown cruise, finding our best sound together.”
After dinner, Mr. Yoshioka hoped that I might play the piano, but I pretended that the discomfort of having the sutures removed would prevent me from being my best.
The pedals worked as well by foot as they always had, and Grandpa Teddy played three of his favorite Jimmy McHugh tunes, while Mom stood by him to sing them: “On the Sunny Side of the Street” and “I Feel a Song Coming On” and finally “I’m in the Mood for Love,” all with lyrics by Dorothy Fields.
Mrs. Lorenzo and Mr. Yoshioka sat on the sofa during that little performance, and the tailor’s dark eyes shone with enchantment.
After the third number, he said to Grandpa, “If I cannot see your daughter tomorrow night, then I must come to see you.”
“I’d love to have you as my guest,” Grandpa said. “But next week or the week after. This week, there’s a big convention, the hotel’s very busy through Sunday. Already a month ago, the restaurant where I play had booked every reservation available.”
Later, after I had gotten into my pajamas and then into bed, my mother came to say good-night. “That was a lovely evening. I’ve become quite a fan of your friend, Jonah.”
“He’s a good guy.”
“And you’re a brave one. I’m sorry the sutures hurt.”
“Well, they’re out now. Just a little tender. I’ll be okay.”
“You will be okay,” she agreed. “You always will be.”
“Your first day off, can we go somewhere in the station wagon?”
“That would be Monday. Where do you want to go?”
“Somewhere really cool.”
She smiled. “It’ll be so cool, your breath will fog up.” She leaned down and kissed my forehead. “Sweet dreams.”
After she left, I switched off the lamp. Lying in the dark, I took the penlight from under my pillow.
Malcolm had found it at a five-and-dime. He’d not been willing to tell me how much it cost. “Maybe I shoplifted it. How do you know? If you’re going to switch it on after your mom says lights out and then write symphonies when you should be sleeping, don’t tell her where you got it.”
Maybe the dream about being trapped somewhere with a dead woman would come true, and maybe it wouldn’t. But if I woke up in pitch blackness with rushing-water sounds all around, I would not want to be without a source of light.
When I tried the penlight, the narrow beam didn’t travel far, but farther than I had expected. It painted a pale ring of light on the ceiling, the center darker than the periphery. Kind of like an eye staring down at me.
92
Joe Tortelli spent a week in Vegas, living in a complimentary suite at a major hotel, where he was a valued “whale,” a high-roller. It happened to be the week of the First National bombing. After Las Vegas, he took a showgirl to San Francisco and later south to a resort in Newport Beach, a honeymoon without benefit of marriage. During this period, he had no interest in the news.
He returned to our city, sans showgirl, on the afternoon of the day that I had my sutures removed. His trusted right-hand man, Tony Urqell, had known better than to disturb Tortelli when he was engaged in such a romantic adventure. But upon his boss’s return, Urqell informed him that a manager of various Tortelli properties believed he might have rented a building to one of the men wanted for the bank bombing and the Colt-Thompson heist.
Joe Tortelli owned a great deal of real estate in our city: apartment buildings, office buildings, parking garages, and more. Among the things he owned were several large, rusting, and mostly unrented Quonset huts in an old manufacturing district slated for redevelopment. One of these Quonsets was the building in question, which had been rented out for six months, supposedly to supply the lessee with much-needed temporary storage.
Urqell had not acted on the manage
r’s suspicion because it was Joe Tortelli’s policy to regard the police as an enemy and to avoid giving them a reason to become suspicious of any of his enterprises, even though most of them were, these days, legit. With Tortelli back on home base, Urqell informed him of the manager’s report and wanted to know what he should do.
“Go have a look,” Tortelli said. “Take some guys with you. If these bomb-throwin’ cowboys used the place, they won’t be there now, but we’ve got to get out in front of the story.”
Urqell and the three guys who went with him found the armored truck, the van painted to look like a Colt-Thompson support vehicle, and the very ripe body of the third guard, missing for fifteen days.
By Wednesday morning, the bombing-heist saga, which had faded somewhat from the news, was once more the top story.
93
Three hundred miles from the city, in a neighboring state, Lucas Drackman, Smaller, and Tilton were holed up in a comfortable house on a 210-acre farm, long fallow, that he had bought years previously in case he ever needed it for this purpose.
If their original plan had unfolded as intended, they would never have left the city. The authorities would have had no clue as to the identities of the perpetrators. As soon as Smaller had opened the armored door with a cutting torch and they had gotten their hands on the 1.6 million in cash, they could have gone directly back to the house overlooking Riverside Commons.
The Japanese swish on the park bench should have suggested to Drackman that their scheme might not unfold precisely as designed. But by then, they were on the cusp of action, and he believed that victory never favored the hesitant.
After the heist, in the Quonset hut, they had a police-band radio, an ordinary radio, and a TV to monitor the breaking news. Smaller hadn’t quite breached the thick door when Fiona called their attention to the TV. A reporter stood outside First National, talking to a disheveled woman with bits of debris in her hair, a bank teller who had been at work when the bombs went off.
“A little boy, a little Negro boy,” she said. “He shouted there was a bomb, we should get out. I thought it was a prank, then I knew it wasn’t. He saved my life. I dropped to the floor behind my window, the teller’s window, so I was protected.”