by Zoey Parker
“Ok, thanks Pip,” I say.
As Pulse pulls up to the house I now know all too well, I take out the small photograph of Hannah.
“Don’t worry, sis. I’ll see you soon.”
I tuck it back in my pocket, take out the White Lady and get out of our van.
Pulse swears when he lays eyes on my gun.
“Jesus it’s a thing of beauty.”
“You ready?” I ask.
He nods, then says “Wait a sec.”
He goes to the back of the car, opens the truck and laughs.
“That fucker Jaws texted me to check the trunk for extra guns.”
“And?” I say.
“Come over and have a look.”
I go over there and, seeing them, have to laugh myself.
Laid out there, in a neat line of three, are the masks: three ugly-as-sin droops of old man masks, the same as the one Jaws showed me.
Seeing them there, all set up neat and expectant, I almost feel bad for the guy.
“What d’you think Boss?” Pulse asks.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake… Fine.”
He puts one on and then I do the same.
“Get over here,” I say, and I take a picture of us.
“Maybe Jaws’ll take it a little less hard now,” I say, though I doubt it.
Eyes scanning all around, we make our way to the front gate, past pesticide green grass and along the no-longer electrified fence.
The front gate is already open. That’s what the first van was for, bashing the wrought-iron things open. Pip had already disabled the electricity; the rest was easy. You don’t make your gates all that hard to bash through when they’re electric in the first place.
Striding up the smooth sidewalk to the Tudor-style mansion feels surreal. This is where Toni Piccolo was, Carlos was – maybe even Hannah was.
And today – it’s going to be all over. Today is going to change everything. The Piccolos are going to be sorry they ever messed with the Rebel Saints.
At the door, I turn to Pulse.
“Wait here.”
He cocks his head.
“Huh?”
“I have no idea what we’re walking into here,” I say, “Let me check it out first. You can cover my back. I’ll call for you when I want you.”
Pulse gapes at me like I just asked him to remove all his tattoos in one go.
“Pulse. This way we won’t be walking into a trap.”
Pulse closes his eyes, his black lids making him look terrifyingly similar to an actual skeleton.
When he opens them, he cocks his gun.
“Okay, Boss. But if I don’t get any word from you in 10, I’m going in.”
I nod, turn to the door.
If I can’t give Pulse word in ten minutes, then we’ve got bigger problems.
###
The door is locked, of course. I don’t knock, I kick.
There’s no alarm because the alarm was the fence and the fence is dead.
It takes a few kicks before the ornate carved thing topples.
Inside is a museum of a home, all gold paisley wallpaper and pottery that looks fragile.
There’s no Piccolos or their men – yet.
How about we encourage some to come on out and play?
I shove a Grecian looking vase to the floor. It explodes into a hundred pieces, and I smile. Looks like it really was fragile.
A shot, and the next second a bullet buries itself in the wall where my shoulder was a second ago.
I duck, looking around furiously.
Another bullet flies out, and I see it. A flick of a hand by an open door down the hallway off to the side.
The shooter’s in the basement. Where Hannah is. Of course.
As I creep ahead, eyes locked on the doorway, I yell, “There’s lots of us! If you surrender, we won’t kill you! This place is gonna blow!”
Silence, then “Gabe?”
I freeze.
No, there’s no way. That voice. No. It can’t be…
“Toni?”
She inches out of the door, gun in hand. The same gun from before.
Head to toe black, wide black-jeaned hips, thin black-shirted waist. My Tony with a y. Toni Piccolo. No jobs, no questions, no meeting in public. Of course. It all makes sense now.
I take off my mask, don’t lower my gun. She doesn’t lower hers. She looks as dismayed as I feel. Tony, my Tony.
“You knew…” is all I can come out with, faced with the horror before me.
She can’t even look at me; the words seem to jerk out of her against her will.
“I’m sorry— I wanted to tell you— I just— My family—” She shakes her head, her eyes desperate. “I never wanted this.”
I cock the rifle.
“Where’s Hannah?”
She stares at me as if I’ve shot her already.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play dumb. I know about her and Carlos. How you sick people tricked my sister and took her, how she’s in the basement, going to be sent out with the latest shipment of girls.”
Toni shakes her head, her eyes still wild.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I stride up to Toni, the liar, the bitch, put the muzzle on her forehead.
“Don’t lie to me!”
She’s still holding her own gun but she seems unaware of it. She gapes at me, looks as unsure if I’ll actually be using this gun on her as I am.
“I’m sorry, Gabe.”
“Give me the gun,” I demand.
She hands it over without a word.
I tuck hers in my back pocket, lower my gun and grab her arm, “Take me there. To the basement.”
She nods and we descend the staircase.
It’s strange, this same acquiescence in this entirely different context.
I watch Toni carefully. Who knows what other tricks she has up her sleeve, this liar I thought I knew.
But this shell of a woman slumps down the stairs in clumsy resigned steps with her head hung. At the bottom, she sweeps out her arm.
“Here’s the den. I don’t know what they told you, but here it is.”
A greyhound leaps up and runs at me, barking.
“Hey Jane,” Toni says.
I aim the gun at the growling thing.
Toni steps in front of it, says, “Gabe, not Jane, please.”
I look away.
This is a distraction. I don’t have time for this.
“Hey Pip,” I say into my headset, “Any reading on the house - where Hannah is?”
“No, but I can get one. Hang on a sec, Boss,” he says.
While I wait, I turn my attention to Toni, who’s still regarding me with a cowed expression.
“If anything’s happened to my sister, I swear…”
“Boss, she’s in a back room. It’s attached to the basement, but it doesn’t look like there’s a door. The room’s attached to the back wall.”
I look around the room. Back wall, back wall….
“Which one is the back wall?” I ask Toni. I don’t have time to figure out which wall is facing what.
Toni gestures to the far one, where there’s an armchair and a desk. I stride up to it, strike it.
It’s hollow. There’s something on the other side.
I scan the wooden walls furiously, for a hidden door, a lever, anything. But there’s only a stupid ugly armchair and a rickety side table. I can’t shoot through the wall, I could hurt Hannah.
Maybe there’s a back way in, but do I have time to find it?
“Is there a back way to the room behind here?” I ask Toni.
She just shakes her head. “What room?”
“Shit.”
I kick the armchair and it shifts. There’s a line on the wall behind it, a groove. Oh yes.
I shove the armchair over more and soon a low door is revealed. It’s like one of those pet doors, with a flap, except this one is big enough for humans
.
I crouch down, stick my head through the flap and my heart freezes in my chest.
Hannah. My sister. There she is, in the corner of this hidden room, curled up in a ball on the cement floor.
I crawl in.
“Don’t follow me. Don’t move,” I tell Toni.
I run to Hannah.
Her bruised eyes are closed, her cracked lips are parted – but she’s breathing. She’s alive.
I carry her to the doorway flap, push her through, then crawl in after her.
Toni’s looking at Hannah like she’s a ghost.
“Gabe, I had no idea, I…”
“Shut up,” I say, then, to my headset, “Hey Pip, you there?”
“Yup Boss.”
“I got Hannah. Tell the boys they can let ‘er blow in five minutes.”
“Okay Boss.”
When I turn to Toni, she’s sitting on the armchair, eyeing me placidly.
I point the gun at her.
“What are you doing? Get up.”
She shakes her head.
“I won’t let you. This is my home, my life. If you’re going to blow it up, then I’ll get blown up with it.”
I scan her face, the set parallel of her mouth and eyes. She’s dead serious.
“Did you ever consider that now that I know who you really are and just what you’re capable of that I may be entirely fine with that?”
She meets my glare with one of her own.
“So, do it then. Go. Leave me here to die.”
The certainty in her voice enrages me.
I pick up her struggling form with one hand, then Hannah’s limp one in the other.
But Toni is thrashing so much that she falls to the ground.
Splayed there, she grins with what I just realize now too, “You can't take both of us.”
“Three minutes Boss, you’re out of there, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, Pip, almost. One second.”
I take a step then check over my shoulder. Toni hasn’t budged.
“Toni, be reasonable.”
“I am being reasonable. What you are suggesting is to destroy my entire life. I may not agree with the way my family has done business or continues to, but they are just that – family. That’s something I thought at least you could sympathize with.”
She glances at Hannah’s slumped form, who flutters open one eye, “What…”
“Shhh...” I murmur, patting her head.
“Two minutes, Boss.”
“Yeah, yeah okay,” I snap back.
“What are you suggesting?” I ask Toni.
“A compromise. You evacuate then blow up the two compounds, but leave the house, leave my family. Carlos is corrupt, but many of the others at the funeral coming here after for the reception are innocent.”
“One minute Boss.”
“Got it Pip!” I snarl.
“You still want me to go through with it?” he asks.
“Yes – no! Wait a second, wait for my command.”
I advance so that I’m less than an inch from Toni, our glares boring into each other.
“You realize what you’re asking me to do?” I say.
“Please, Gabe. I didn’t know anything about your sister. I’m in the process of changing the business now; we won’t be bothering you or interfering with your shipments any longer. I can get them to agree to this change when they see how profitable it can be. I know I can. Please. If you kill them, I’ll have no one left.”
I stand there and take her in: my Mexican princess – the woman who betrayed me, the love who screwed me over in the worst way.
Her face looks earnest, those black eyes are opaque, that big red lower lip is quivering. But how do I know that those black eyes aren’t opaque just to obscure what she’s really thinking, that she’s not just quivering her lower lip in time to her lies? How can I trust her now that I know she’s lied to me about everything?
“Boss? They’re ready now.”
Pip’s voice just adds to the din.
My head and heart are yelling different things, each dead set on its own way, unable to compromise.
Kill her. End this.
What if she’s telling the truth?
Toni steps toward, her eyes pleading.
I turn away.
“Ok, Pip. Blow the compounds but leave the house for now.”
I walk to the stairs, then look back, “You coming?”
She shakes her head.
“I’m staying Gabe. I’m staying until you go.”
Now my head is screaming victory: Blow the house too. This is a trap. Why should I trust her if she doesn’t trust me?
How do I know she won’t stab my back again as soon as I turn it?
Toni doesn’t react when I lift my gun. Instead she stands there, her body facing me, open. Trembling, but not moving. As if she already knows what I’m going to do.
I raise the gun to her head, then turn and run up the stairs. I burst out of the house just as the two buildings behind it explode in a roar of flames.
“And Pip?”
“Yeah Boss?”
“Tell them the attack part is off. This is enough for today. The other part we can carry out when the Piccolos try to rebuild.”
“You sure Boss?”
“Yeah Pip.”
As I walk out, a hideous old man runs up to me. Ah, Pulse, the mask, of course.
“What the fuck man? Were there a lot of guards? I was about to go in after you.”
“I’ll explain later,” I say, “I’ve got to get her into the van, to a doctor.”
Now noticing Hannah in my arms, Pulse gives me a relieved smile.
As we head for the van, Rebel Saints streaming around us to the other vans, I hear blasts behind us. We duck.
“Waoooo! It’s go time! You guys ready!”
It’s another hideous old man, Jaws wearing the mask, holding a gigantic bazooka.
“Jaws,” I say, but he doesn’t seem to hear me.
“I’m ready! I am so fucking ready and pumped and hyped and waooooo!”
“Jaws,” I say.
“We gonna make it rain with their blood, use their tongues to clean off our cars, ohhh it’s gonna be some… Yeah?”
“Mission’s over, we’re going home.”
Jaws maniacal grin disappears.
“You’re kidding me.”
“Nope, not kidding. We blew the compounds, it’s over.”
He gapes at me, mumbles, “But what about …?”
“Gabe’s sister is in the back; she’s okay,” Pulse says, going past me to climb into the driver’s seat.
Jaws nods glumly. He understands now. Hannah is all that matters.
I go to the back, sit down beside her.
I check her arms and legs, her face, her scalp. She’s fine. Dirty and bruised, but fine.
Guess they didn’t want to harm their merchandise I think, and my stomach twists.
As we drive away, Pulse throws a pleased look back.
“You know Boss, I didn’t want to admit it, but I reckoned your sister was toast.”
An icy silence, in which I contemplate blowing Pulse’s head off.
“Thanks for keeping that to yourself,” I say quietly, and that shuts them both right up.
I spend the rest of the ride stroking her head. She doesn’t open her eyes again, only tosses and turns with frowns and little sighs of exasperation.
I’d never admit it to the boys, but I was afraid of the exact same thing as Pulse.
Chapter 28
Toni
The aftermath is oblivion.
I sit and wait, while my mind screams at me to leave.